US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has arrived in Taiwan for a visit. Your plane landed in the capital Taipei on Tuesday evening (local time). The top politician ignored warnings from China, which sees the democratic island as part of the People's Republic.
Tensions with China notwithstanding, the visit to Taiwan is widely welcomed. The stay is considered an appreciation of the democratic island republic. In Taipei, it was also seen as a setback for Beijing, which is trying to isolate Taiwan internationally.
Cross-party Taiwanese parliamentarians welcomed the 82-year-old. Kuomintang MP Chen Yi-hsin said he hoped Beijing would not "overreact". Pelosi represents Congress and the people of the United States, but not US President Joe Biden, he told the CNA news agency. Her visit does not represent a change in the US's "one China policy," which recognizes Beijing as China's only legitimate government.
Ruling Progressive Party (DPP) MP Wang Tingyu expects Beijing to take some "disruptive actions". However, he does not expect a reaction that could trigger a conflict with the USA. The Secretary-General of the Taiwan Human Rights Association, Shih Yi-hsiang, sees the visit as a "signal that we should deepen democracy and human rights and oppose the authoritarianism of the Chinese Communist Party".
