By Yimou Lee and Sarah Wu
TAIPEI (Reuters) – U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi left Taiwan on Wednesday after pledging solidarity and saluting the island’s democracy, leaving a trail of Chinese anger over her brief visit to the island. self-government that Beijing claims as part of its territory.
Pelosi, whose delegation made an unannounced but closely watched stop in Taiwan on Tuesday after visits to Singapore and Malaysia, is expected to continue her tour of Asia now with visits to South Korea and Japan.
His plane took off from an airport in the capital Taipei at around 6 pm (local time, 7 am in Brasília).
China demonstrated its outrage at the highest-profile US visit to the island in 25 years with an explosion of military activity in surrounding waters, summoning the US ambassador to Beijing and halting several agricultural imports from Taiwan.
Some of China’s planned military exercises would have taken place within Taiwan’s 12-nautical-mile air and sea territory, according to Taiwan’s Ministry of Defense, an unprecedented move that a senior defense official described to reporters as “equivalent to a Taiwan sea and air blockade”.
Pelosi arrived with a US Congressional delegation on her unannounced visit, defying repeated warnings from China, in what she said showed the US’s unwavering commitment to Taiwan’s democracy.
“Our delegation came to Taiwan to make it unequivocally clear that we will not abandon Taiwan,” Pelosi told Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen.
“Now more than ever, America’s solidarity with Taiwan is crucial, and that’s the message we’re bringing here today,” she said during her roughly 19-hour visit.
A longtime critic of China, especially on human rights, Pelosi met with a former Tiananmen Square activist, a Hong Kong bookseller who had been detained by China, and a Taiwanese activist recently released by China.
Chinese fury over the 82-year-old Democrat’s challenge to Beijing was evident all over Chinese social media, with one blogger complaining: “that old devil, she really dares to come!”
The last Speaker of the US House of Representatives to go to Taiwan was Republican Newt Gingrich in 1997. But Pelosi’s visit comes amid the sharp deterioration of Sino-US relations and, for the last quarter century, China emerged as a far more powerful economic, military, and geopolitical force.
China considers Taiwan part of its territory and has never renounced the use of force to bring the island under its control. The United States has warned China against using the visit as a pretext for military action against Taiwan.
In retaliation, China’s customs department announced a suspension of citrus fruit and frozen horse mackerel imports from Taiwan, while its Ministry of Commerce banned the export of natural sand to Taiwan.
While there were few signs of protest against US targets or consumer goods, there was a significant police presence outside the US consulate in Shanghai and what appeared to be more security than usual outside the embassy in Beijing.
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