Taiwan's Tsai to transit in US in move bound to anger China

[TAIPEI] Taiwan President Tsai Ing-Wen will pass through the United States when she visits Latin America next month, the foreign ministry said Thursday, a move bound to infuriate China which had urged the United States to block a transit stopover.

China is deeply suspicious of Ms Tsai, who it thinks wants to push for the formal independence of Taiwan, a self-governing island that Beijing regards as a renegade province, ineligible for state-to-state relations.

Details of the stopovers will be disclosed before the end of this week, the ministry said.

The transit details are being closely watched as Taiwan media has speculated Ms Tsai will seek to meet President-elect Donald Trump's transition team ahead of his Jan 20 inauguration.

Mr Trump angered China when he spoke to Ms Tsai this month in a break with decades of precedent and cast doubt on his incoming administration's commitment to Beijing's "one China" policy.

The United States, which switched diplomatic recognition from Taiwan to China in 1979, has acknowledged the Chinese position that there is only "one China" and that Taiwan is part of it.

Ms Tsai's office earlier this month said she would visit Honduras, Nicaragua, Guatemala and El Salvador in that order. She will leave Taiwan on Jan 7 and return on Jan 15.

Taiwan had as many as 30 diplomatic allies in the mid-1990s, but now has formal relations with just 21, mostly smaller and poorer nations in Latin America and the Pacific.

The American Institute in Taiwan, the de facto embassy of the United States, had no immediate comment on Ms Tsai's itinerary.

REUTERS