TAIWAN PRESIDENT MEETS WITH SPEAKER McCARTHY AT REAGAN LIBRARY

China Issues Threats, Again

President Tsai Ing-wen meets with United States House Speaker Kevin McCarthy at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, California on Wednesday.

President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) met with United States House Speaker Kevin McCarthy in a historic meeting in California on Wednesday morning despite Beijing's repeated protests. Tsai, who landed in California on Tuesday evening, arrived around 10 a.m. Wednesday at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley. There she was greeted by McCarthy amid a heavy media presence.

“FREEDOM IS NEVER MORE THAN ONE GENERATION AWAY FROM EXTINCTION.”

Early in her remarks President Tsai gave tribute to President Reagan by repeating an observation he often made:  “Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction.”

Tsai went on to say that it was fitting that she and Speaker McCarthy came together at the Simi Valley library honoring Reagan, whose administration was instrumental in securing assurances between the U.S. and Taiwan in 1982.  That continued support assures “the people of Taiwan that we are not isolated and we are not alone," Tsai said, but added that democracy in Taiwan is once again under threat from China.  “We once again find ourselves in a world where democracy is under threat and the urgency of keeping the beacon of freedom shining cannot be understated,” she said.

HISTORIC MEETING

Tsai and McCarthy met behind closed doors, the first-ever meeting between a Taiwanese president and a U.S. House Speaker on American soil, and the third time a Taiwan president met with a U.S. House Speaker since the Carter Administration ended diplomatic relations with the Republic of China (Taiwan's official name) in 1979.

Shortly after Kevin McCarthy became Speaker of the U.S. House, he promised he would visit Taiwan this spring to show American support for our long time ally. However, the Tsai Administration proposed an alternative to a meeting in Taiwan, which Taipei feared would trigger a more aggressive response by Beijing.

This meeting took place eight months after Speaker Nancy Pelosi visited Taiwan last August and met with Tsai at the Presidential Office. Pelosi’s trip, the first sitting U.S. House Speaker to visit Taiwan in 25 years after Newt Gingrich's 1997 visit, prompted China to launch week-long large-scale military drills around Taiwan and suspend the imports of dozens of Taiwanese agricultural and food products.

MORE THREATS FROM CHINA

Beijing, which claims Taiwan is part of Chinese territory* and opposes any official interactions between Taipei, Taiwan’s capital, and Washington DC, has repeatedly raised objections to the meeting between Tsai and McCarthy. Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Mao Ning (毛寧) told a press briefing earlier this week that Beijing would "take resolute measures" to protect its national interests should Tsai and McCarthy meet.

Shortly before Tsai arrived in Los Angeles, China announced a three-day drill in the Taiwan Strait that it characterized as a "joint cruise and patrol special operation."

XI: “THOSE WHO PLAY WITH FIRE WILL PERISH”

Last summer, when Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced she was considering a trip to Taiwan, the CCP was not happy. The very fact that the Speaker of the US House of Representatives may visit Taiwan had the Chinese president seeing red (pun intended). Joe Biden begged her not to go because he didn’t want his buddies within the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to get mad. She ignored him and had a very successful trip.

After telling Pelosi not to go, Joe Biden ran to the phone, calling Chinese President Xi Jinping, probably begging him not to shoot down her plane.  The White House refuses to release the transcript of the call because it would prove yet again that a weak president invites aggression from our enemies.  The CCP released theirs.  According to their transcript, Xi threatened Biden and America:

"Those who play with fire will perish by it. It is hoped that the US will be clear-eyed about this."

WEAK PRESIDENTS INVITE AGGRESSION FROM AMERICA’S ENEMIES

China laughs at America.  They know we have an occupant in the White House who is a dementia patient and was put there via massive election fraud. They know we have a wimpy Secretary of State (Blinken) because he sat quietly while being lectured by his Chinese counterpart on “human rights abuses.”  And they know America has a Secretary of Defense (Austin) who is preoccupied with turning the once mighty US military into some type of panty-waisted woke dystopia. Even the Russians are laughing at the transgendering indoctrination of American children.

Democrat Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan and Republican McCarthy’s meeting with President Tsai today shows that support for Taiwan is bipartisan. China has been making plans to invade Taiwan since Biden entered the White House.  The only thing holding them back is the possibility that America might take military action against them.  Hopefully, these two visits have the CCP re-thinking their plans.

DOES TAIWAN REALLY BELONG TO CHINA?

*The Chinese Communist Party has long maintained that the Taiwanese people are really Chinese people and that Taiwan really belongs to China.  Well, that depends upon how one looks at it.  Should the American colonies have been forever ruled by England even though Americans wanted to govern themselves?  At the time of the American Revolution there were much, much closer ties between Americans and Englishmen than there is today between Taiwanese and Chinese. 

BRIEF HISTORY OF TAIWAN

Anthropologists believe humans have lived on the Island of Taiwan for tens of thousands of years.  By 3000 BC they had established an agrarian culture.  DNA shows that these first inhabitants share the same ancestors as the original Hawaiians and other cultures around the South Pacific.  They spoke an early form of Austronesian languages.

There were two waves of migrants from the Chinese Empire’s southeastern provinces in the 1600s: 1) the ethnic Holko who still speak the Hokkien language and 2) the Hakka people who still maintain their distinct identity and language in today’s Taiwan.

During this period the Island of Taiwan was nominally part of the Chinese Empire. Taiwan & China are separated by 110 miles of ocean called the Strait of Taiwan.  The Chinese government had little actual control over Taiwan and its people due to the distance and the poor travel & communication conditions of the day.  The Taiwanese were mostly free to make their own decisions and run their own affairs.

SPOILS OF WAR: CHINA GAVE TAIWAN TO JAPAN 

The Chinese government long considered Taiwan useless, referring to it as a place where “flowers don’t bloom and birds don’t shit.”  In reality, Taiwan is a beautiful land, covered with forests, mountains, rivers, lakes, flowers, many species of birds and numerous unique animals, including the Mei Hua Lu deer.  As a Portuguese ship approached the island around 1542-44, the sailors called out “Ilha Formosa,” which means “beautiful island.”

After defeat in the Sino-Japanese War, Empress Dowager Cixi quickly ceded Taiwan to the Empire of Japan in 1895.  Japan occupied Taiwan until their own defeat in WWII, at which time China’s nationalist government took nominal control of the island.  Following defeat by Mao’s Red Army, the president of the nationalist government, Chiang Kai-shek, brought what was left of his army to Taiwan in 1949 and declared martial law. 

Chiang’s soldiers slaughtered 18,000 to 28,000 Taiwanese, most of whom were deemed “too educated.”  They assassinated the only Harvard-educated man, along with doctors, professors, lawyers, newspaper editors, etc.

Chiang Kai Shek passed away in 1975 and his son took over as ruler.  His son passed away in 1988.  By that time the Taiwanese people were eager to rule themselves and the dictatorship collapsed.  Taiwan became a democracy in 1989.  Both their economy and democracy are now thriving, and the Taiwanese people don’t want to be taken over by China. They don’t want to live under the oppression of Communism.