China hit back over Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen’s visits to the U.S. by leveling largely symbolic sanctions on the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, other organizations and a key envoy.
The library where Tsai met House Speaker Kevin McCarthy and the Hudson Institute think tank were targeted because they provided a platform for her “separatist activities,” the Foreign Ministry in Beijing said in a statement Friday.
Tsai spoke at an event in New York last week that was organized by the conservative Hudson Institute, saying the security of the world hinges on self-ruled Taiwan’s fate.
The Chinese sanctions included limiting the activities the organizations could conduct in the Asian nation, and freezing the assets of people running them. Those measures will probably have little effect because the targets have few ties to China. Beijing also said it was stepping up sanctions on Hsiao Bi-khim, Taipei’s representative to the U.S., because she promoted independence.
Beijing had pledged to respond to any meeting between Tsai and McCarthy, calling it a provocation that “damages China’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.” The latest measures are more muted than in August, when Nancy Pelosi became the first sitting speaker in 25 years to visit Taiwan.
Back then China held military drills practicing a blockade of the island and sent missiles overhead, in addition to sanctioning a slew of Taiwan officials. The relative restraint shown by Chinese President Xi Jinping this time is partly because he’s hosting French leader Emmanuel Macron and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen to win support for his vague blueprint to bring peace to Ukraine.
Still, Xi said during a meeting with von der Leyen on Thursday that the Taiwan issue is the core of China’s core interests, and anyone expecting his nation to compromise is entertaining “fantasies.” China also sailed an aircraft carrier past Taiwan’s southern tip just before Tsai met McCarthy.
China has pledged to bring Taiwan under its control someday, by force if necessary. Tsai’s Democratic Progressive Party asserts Taiwan is an independent nation deserving more recognition internationally.
She returns Friday from a trip that’s included stops in New York and Los Angeles, where she met McCarthy. “I believe our bond is stronger now than at any time or point in my lifetime,” McCarthy said after the meeting at the Reagan Library.
Tsai is set to meet Michael McCaul, a Republican who heads the House Foreign Affairs Committee, in Taipei on Saturday. He is part of a bipartisan delegation of lawmakers visiting Taiwan, the kind of trip that upsets Beijing because it opposes nations it has ties with from having official links with the island.
McCaul and other lawmakers visited Taiwan’s legislature on Friday, saying the U.S. wants to move forward on free-trade and double-taxation agreements with Taiwan.
Hsiao seemed to make light of the latest sanctions against her, writing on Twitter: “Wow, the PRC just sanctioned me again, for the second time.” While the earlier punishments “limited” organizations linked to Hsiao from cooperating with mainland entities and individuals, the latest ones say the activity is “prohibited.”
Back in August, Hsiao and her relatives were also banned from entering the mainland, Hong Kong and Macau. That punishment is unlikely to have much effect because DPP figures are unlikely to ever visit the mainland.
On Friday, Beijing also barred the directors of The Prospect Foundation think tank and the Council of Asian Liberals and Democrats from traveling to the mainland, Hong Kong and Macau, and doing any business across the strait.
The two organizations have been promoting independence and using academic exchanges as a pretext for raising Taiwan’s profile internationally, Zhu Fenglian, spokeswoman of the Taiwan Affairs Office in Beijing, said in a statement.
Taiwan’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement after the sanctions were announced that “coercion and suppression will not change the objective facts, but will only strengthen our government’s belief in freedom and democracy.”
It urged China to “to face the fact that the two sides of the strait are not affiliated with each other.”
