President Biden will send an unofficial delegation to visit Taiwan after the island conducts its elections this weekend.
The move is sure to anger China, which regularly bristles at any suggestion that Taiwan is an independent nation apart from China. The White House has not offered details about who will be in the delegation, according to NBC News. Fox News Digital reached out to the White House, but they did not immediately respond.
Taiwan’s election, set for Jan. 13, could play a major role in furthering the island’s separation from mainland China. One of the presidential candidates, Lai Ching-te, is a proponent of Taiwanese independence, and Beijing has issued a statement urging Taiwanese voters not to support him.
Lai currently serves as vice president and is leading in election polls.
China has in the past reacted with a military response when the U.S. sends a delegation of officials or lawmakers to Taiwan.
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Then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi visited the island in 2022, resulting in weeks of Chinese live fire military exercises surrounding the island. China made a similar display last year when Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen met with then-House Speaker Kevin McCarthy in California last year.
Chinese President Xi Jinping vowed during his year-end address on New Year’s Eve that Taiwan would be reunified with mainland China. He has warned in the past that China could resort to using force.
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“All Chinese on both sides of the Taiwan Strait should be bound by a common sense of purpose and share in the glory of the rejuvenation of the Chinese nation,” Xi said in his speech.
“The motherland will surely be reunified,” he added.
Taiwan split from mainland China in 1949, when democratic forces fled to the island after losing a civil war against the Chinese Communist Party.
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