Thread by @wentisung

My quotes for @CNN, on US House Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s changing his Taiwan trip into a in-person meeting with #Taiwan’s President @iingwen in California.

@CNN @iingwen Tsai’s potential meeting with Kevin McCarthy in California is not necessarily a “replacement or downgrade, but an add-on”, or a bonus.

McCarthy could always visit Taiwan at a later date. 2/

Taiwan is balancing multiple needs here.

1. A visit by yet another US House Speaker (after Nancy Pelosi) could #normalize high-level visits by American officials, and consolidate earlier gains. /3

2. Yet Taiwan also needs to be seen by its Western partners that it is being a responsible stakeholder in the process.

Some may be concerned about whether another visit at this time may be too unnecessarily provocative, as partners are already stretched thin w. helping Ukraine/4

They may think that there is better timing than this current moment to be pursing another US speaker visit to Taiwan. And Taiwan wants to be seen as an understanding friend.

Yet canceling a potential trip risks been read by Beijing as a sign of US weakness & weaken deterrence./5

Compromise solution: Don't cancel the visit, but leave it to the longer term, and reschedule/shelf it for now.

And in the short-term, hold a meeting in the US to reassure partners & Taiwanese especially -- it can be a very visual #deliverable to show continued US support... /6

for Taiwan, regardless of change of party leadership in the US Congress.

So long as Taiwan's President Tsai receives upgraded protocol treatment than before during her US visit and meeting with Speaker McCarthy, Taiwan can read it as a win -- and a much lower cost one at that./7

e.g. this time Tsai will reportedly get to make a formal 'speech' during her California visit -- an upgrade from her 2018 trip, when she only got to make more casual 'remarks'. Perhaps some other bells and whistles will get thrown in, too. /8

Taiwan is helping the US in the @FT story, as the TW official who leaked the scoop framed it as TW's idea to meet in the US (instead of McCarthy going to TW). This way, in accepting TW's offer, US is 'playing good host', rather than being soft on China. /9
ft.com/content/69b627…

Per FT's original wording: "A second Taiwanese official said that after McCarthy expressed his view that Taiwan’s concerns about Beijing’s response were “reasonable”, Tsai’s team had said, “why don’t we take the opportunity of the stopover [in the US] to meet”." /10

In initiate the meeting in California idea, TW opts to not go for a homerun right now, to:
1. ⬇️partners' concerns about potential PRC military action.
2. Save US/McCarthy face.
3. Keeping specter of another potential US House Speaker visit to Taiwan in reserve as a leverage./11

Link to the CNN full story by CNN's Beijing Bureau and the brilliant @Nectar_Gan. /12/end

edition.cnn.com/2023/03/07/chi…