Taiwan Chief Executive Tsai Ing-wen thanked US authorities for helping the island strengthen its self-defense capabilities during a meeting with US Congressman Mike Gallagher in Taipei on Thursday.
⠀
On Thursday, US Congressman Mike Gallagher, who heads the House Select Committee on China and the threats posed by it, arrived in Taiwan at the head of the American delegation.
⠀
“I would like to thank the US administration and Congress for continuing to help Taiwan strengthen its self-defense capabilities,” Tsai Ing-wen said.
⠀
Tsai Ing-wen noted that the United States and Taiwan work together to “defend freedom and democracy, and support regional peace.” She stressed that Taipei hopes to see more “Taiwan-US exchanges” in 2024.
⠀
The situation around Taiwan worsened significantly after the visit of then-Speaker of the US House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi to the island in early August 2022. China, which considers the island one of its provinces, condemned Pelosi’s visit, seeing in this step US support for Taiwanese separatism, and held large-scale military exercises.
⠀
Official relations between the central government of China and its island province were interrupted in 1949 after the Kuomintang forces led by Chiang Kai-shek, defeated in the civil war with the Chinese Communist Party, moved to Taiwan. Business and informal contacts between the island and mainland China resumed in the late 1980s. Since the early 1990s, the parties began to contact through non-governmental organizations – the Beijing Association for the Development of Relations across the Taiwan Strait and the Taipei Cross-Strait Exchange Foundation.
