TOKYO (AP) — U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Friday that China will not isolate Taiwan by barring U.S. officials from traveling there.
He made the remarks in Tokyo on the final leg of a tour of Asia highlighted by a visit to Taiwan that angered China.
The Chinese have tried to isolate Taiwan, Pelosi said, including, most recently, preventing the self-governing island from joining the World Health Organization.
“They may try to prevent Taiwan from visiting or participating elsewhere, but they will not isolate Taiwan by preventing us from traveling there,” he said.
Pelosi said her trip to Taiwan was not intended to change the island’s status quo, but to maintain peace in the Taiwan Strait. He also praised Taiwan’s hard-fought democracy, including its progress in diversity and success in technology and business, and criticized China’s violations of trade agreements, weapons proliferation and human rights issues.
Pelosi, the first House speaker to visit Taiwan in 25 years, said in Taipei on Wednesday that America’s commitment to democracy on the island and elsewhere “above all else.”
Pelosi and five other members of Congress arrived in Tokyo late Thursday after visiting Singapore, Malaysia, Taiwan and South Korea.
In Taipei on Wednesday, Pelosi said America’s commitment to democracy in Taiwan and elsewhere “remains steadfast.” She became the first speaker of the Chamber to visit the island in 25 years.
China, which claims Taiwan and has threatened to annex it by force if necessary, called his visit to the island a provocation and on Thursday began military exercises, including missile training, in six areas surrounding Taiwan , in what might be his biggest since the mid-1990s.
Pelosi said China had launched the “strikes probably using our visit as an excuse.”
Earlier on Friday, Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida said China’s military exercises targeting Taiwan pose a “serious problem” that threatens regional peace and security after five ballistic missiles were launched as part of the drills landed in Japan’s exclusive economic zone.
Kishida, speaking after breakfast with Pelosi and her congressional delegation, said the missile launches must “stop immediately.”
Japanese Defense Minister Nobuo Kishi said five missiles landed Thursday in Japan’s exclusive economic zone off Hateruma, an island far south of Japan’s main islands. He said Japan protested to China, saying the missiles “threaten Japan’s national security and the lives of the Japanese people, which we strongly condemn.”
The Defense Ministry later said it believed the other four missiles, fired from China’s southeastern Fujian coast, flew over Taiwan.
Japanese Foreign Minister Yoshimasa Hayashi, attending a regional meeting in Cambodia, said China’s actions are “seriously affecting peace and stability in the region and the international community, and we demand the immediate suspension of military exercises”.
In recent years, Japan has strengthened its defense capability and troop presence in southwestern Japan and remote islands, including Okinawa, which is about 700 kilometers (420 miles) northeast of Taiwan. Many residents say they worry their island could quickly become embroiled in any Taiwan conflict. Okinawa is home to most of the roughly 50,000 US troops stationed in Japan under a bilateral security pact.
At breakfast on Friday, Pelosi and her congressional delegation also discussed their shared security concerns about China, North Korea and Russia, and pledged to work for peace and stability in Taiwan, she said. Kishida said. Pelosi was also scheduled to hold talks with her Japanese counterpart, House Speaker Hiroyuki Hosoda.
Japan and its key ally the US have pushed for new economic and security frameworks with other democracies in the Indo-Pacific region and Europe as a counter to China’s growing influence amid rising tensions between Beijing and Taipei.
Days before Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan, a group of senior Japanese lawmakers, including former Defense Minister Shigeru Ishiba, visited the island and discussed regional security with Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen. Ishiba said Japan, while working with the United States to prevent conflict in the Indo-Pacific, wants a defense agreement with Taiwan.
On Thursday, foreign ministers from the Group of Seven industrialized nations issued a statement saying “there is no justification for using a visit as a pretext for aggressive military activity in the Taiwan Strait.” He said China’s “escalating response risks escalating tensions and destabilizing the region.”
China expressed displeasure at the announcement of the last-minute cancellation of talks between Chinese and Japanese foreign ministers on the sidelines of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations meeting in Cambodia this thursday
Pelosi held talks Thursday in South Korea, also a key U.S. ally, which stayed away from the Taiwan issue, apparently to avoid upsetting China, focusing instead on the growing nuclear threat from North Korea.
In recent years, South Korea has been struggling to strike a balance between the United States and China as their rivalry has deepened.
Chinese military exercises launched on Thursday involve its navy, air force and other departments and will last until Sunday. They included missile strikes against targets in the island’s northern and southern seas in an echo of China’s last major military exercises in 1995 and 1996 to intimidate Taiwan’s leaders and voters.
Taiwan has put its military on alert and conducted civil defense exercises, while the US has numerous naval assets in the area.
China also flew warplanes into Taiwan and blocked imports of its citrus fruits and fish.
China views the island as a breakaway province and views visits to Taiwan by foreign officials as recognition of its sovereignty.
The Biden and Pelosi administrations have said the United States remains committed to the so-called one-China policy, which recognizes Beijing as China’s government but allows informal relations and defense ties with Taipei. The administration discouraged but did not prevent Pelosi from visiting.
Pelosi has long been an advocate for human rights in China. She, along with other lawmakers, visited Beijing’s Tiananmen Square in 1991 to support democracy two years after a bloody military crackdown on protesters in the square.
As leader of the House of Representatives, Pelosi’s trip has raised tensions between the United States and China more than visits by other members of Congress. The last House Speaker to visit Taiwan was Newt Gingrich in 1997.
China and Taiwan, which split in 1949 after a civil war, have no official relations but multibillion-dollar trade ties.
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Associated Press writers Hyung-jin Kim in Seoul, South Korea and Huizhong Wu in Taipei, Taiwan contributed to this report.