After meeting with Taiwan's President Tsai Ing-wen and speaking at a think-tank, Pompeo will travel to Beijing. While in office, Pompeo enraged China.
The Taiwanese administration announced on Monday that former US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo will visit the country next week and meet with President Tsai Ing-wen.
When he was in office, Pompeo enraged China by criticizing the governing Communist Party and sought to boost US engagement with the self-ruled island. Pompeo served as the top diplomat under former President Donald Trump from 2018 to January of last year.
From March 3 to 5, the Taiwanese foreign ministry announced that Pompeo and his wife will pay a visit to the democratic island, which China claims as its own. During their tour, Pompeo would meet with Foreign Minister Joseph Wu and deliver a lecture at a think-tank.
Taiwan's Foreign Ministry said in a statement that former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has been a long-time and steadfast friend of the island nation and has made great contributions to developing Taiwan-U.S. ties throughout his tenure in office.
His visit demonstrates the bipartisan and "rock solid" support for Taiwan that exists in the United States, as well as the strong relationship that exists between Taiwan and the United States, according to the statement.
Despite the absence of formal diplomatic relations with Taiwan, the Trump administration expressed strong support for the island nation, which included high-profile military sales and trips by key US officials to Taipei.
The close ties stood in stark contrast to the United States' more aggressive approach toward China, with the two nations at odds not just over Taiwan but also over human rights in China's far western region of Xinjiang and the crackdown on Hong Kong's democracy.
President Donald Trump's comments on the Communist Party of China, which he described as "the core menace of our era" in testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in 2020, particularly enraged Beijing. The party was denounced as a "predator" later that year, and little than two weeks before he was to leave office in January 2021, he announced the lifting of decades-old limitations on official US engagement with Taiwan.
He asserted that for several decades his department had "developed intricate internal constraints to manage our ambassadors, service members, and other officials' dealings with their Taiwanese counterparts."
His statement stated that the United States administration took these moves "on its own initiative" in an attempt to satisfy the Communist dictatorship in Beijing. "There will be no more."
Beijing blasted the US action, accusing Secretary of State Mike Pompeo of "intentionally inflicting a long-lasting scar on the relationship between China and the United States".
The Chinese government has escalated its military and diplomatic pressure against Taiwan since Tsai assumed office in 2016, and has ramped up its efforts after she was re-elected to a second term by an overwhelming margin.
In a statement, Taiwan's leadership stated that it wishes for peace but will defend itself if attacked, and that only the people of the island have the right to decide their own destiny.
SOURCE: NEWS AGENCIES
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