Taipei/Beijing, Feb. 22, (dpa/GNA) – Taiwan Foreign Minister Joseph Wu met senior US officials in Washington on Tuesday, to the irritation of Beijing.
Top-level officials from Taiwan and the US conducted a security dialogue on Tuesday at the Washington headquarters of the American Institute in Taiwan (AIT), the de facto US embassy to Taipei, Taiwan’s state-run Central News Agency (CNA) reported on Wednesday.
During the seven-hour meeting, Wu and National Security Council Secretary General Wellington Koo exchanged views with US Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman and Principal Deputy National Security Advisor Jon Finer, according to CNA.
In a photo filed by CNA from outside the AIT office in Arlington, Virginia, Wu and Koo waved hands upon their arrival on Tuesday, accompanied by Taiwan’s top US diplomat Hsiao Bi-khim.
The AIT acts as the de facto US embassy due to the lack of official diplomatic ties. The US switched diplomatic recognition from Taipei to Beijing in 1979.
In Taipei, Taiwan’s Foreign Ministry declined to comment on media reports about the meeting.
Beijing was irritated by the meeting. “There is no Taiwan foreign minister. We strongly oppose any form of official contacts between the US and Taiwan. It is consistent and clear,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin told a press conference.
Wang urged the US to abide by the so-called one-China principle, stop any form of official contacts with Taiwan, and stop creating “factors that might heighten the tensions in the Taiwan Strait.”
Mutual visits of Taiwanese government officials and their US counterparts to each other’s country have become more frequent since the Taiwan Travel Act was signed into law by former US president Donald Trump in 2018, CNA said.
In September in 2021, Taiwan’s local media reported that Wu met US officials in person in Annapolis, Maryland.
Self-governing democratic Taiwan has had an independent government since 1949, but China considers the island part of its territory. Beijing rejects official contacts between other countries and Taipei.
GNA