Taiwan's leader visits U.S., angering China

The Washington Post
Date: July 12, 2019
By: Anna Fifield

SHANGHAI —  The Chinese government is accusing the Trump administration of “playing the ‘Taiwan card” and engaging in “a vain plot to suppress China” through recent arms sales and allowing the island’s leader to visit the United States.

This latest outburst came just hours after Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen arrived in New York on Thursday, the first of two stopovers in the United States on either side of a trip to the Caribbean. Days earlier, the State Department had approved the sale of $2.22 billion in arms to Taiwan, which Beijing considers a breakaway province. 

Coinciding with a seemingly intractable trade war, these moves create “greater uncertainties for China-U.S. relations,” the People’s Daily newspaper, the mouthpiece of the Communist Party of China, said Friday in an editorial bearing the pen name “Zhong Sheng,” under which it opines on foreign policy.

The United States “should immediately cancel the planned arms sale to Taiwan, stop selling weapons to Taiwan and terminate military contact with Taiwan, and exercise caution and prudence when handling Taiwan-related issues to avoid serious damage to China-U.S. relations and cross-strait peace and stability,” the editorial concluded.    [FULL  STORY]