Several US lawmakers are to travel to Taiwan in the next few weeks to show support for president-elect William Lai (賴清德), the Financial Times reported yesterday.
US Representative Ami Bera, the Democratic ranking member of the US House of Representatives Subcommittee on the Indo-Pacific, is to visit next week, the newspaper said, citing people familiar with the plans.
He is to be joined by two other cochairs of the Congressional Taiwan Caucus, Republican representatives Andy Barr and Mario Diaz-Balart, it reported.
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US Representative Mike Gallagher, who chairs the US House Select Committee on Strategic Competition between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party, is expected to travel to Taiwan after the first delegation, it added.
The delegation next week is to meet with Lai, but not the losing candidates, the paper cited one person familiar with the planning as saying.
US House Speaker Mike Johnson earlier this week said that he would ask the Republican chairs of “relevant” committees to travel to Taiwan after Lai’s inauguration in May, the Financial Times said.
Gallagher declined to comment to the paper on his visit and whether he would be leading a delegation.
More congressional delegations are expected around the inauguration as well as in March or April to mark the 45th anniversary of the US’ Taiwan Relations Act, it said.
The paper quoted an academic based in Taipei as saying that a delegation from the the US House Select Committee on Strategic Competition between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party would be more inflammatory to Beijing.
“China would certainly go mad over a delegation of [US House] China committee members,” Tamkang University foreign policy expert James Chen (陳奕帆) said. “A visit by members of the Taiwan caucus would be less sensitive because many of them are not necessarily anti-China, while the China committee clearly treats China as a target.”
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