《TAIPEI TIMES》Ministry asserts right to receive guests

‘NO CHINESE RIGHT’: The foreign ministry said that hosting guests is normal in a democracy, rejected Beijing’s claim that Pelosi’s visit breached ‘China’s sovereignty’

By Yang Chen-yu and Jonathan Chin / Staff reporter, with staff writer

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The Ministry of Foreign Affairs yesterday rejected China’s claims that US House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan earlier this week breached “China’s sovereignty.”

On Friday, Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi （王毅） told a news conference that China’s territorial integrity was breached by Pelosi’s visit.

“Should Sun Yat-sen （孫逸仙） return to life, he would point his finger at the nose of [President] Tsai Ing-wen （蔡英文） and call her an unfilial child,” Wang said.

In Taipei, the ministry said in a statement that “Beijing’s absurd claims that Pelosi’s trip to Taiwan contravened Chinese sovereignty and destabilized the [Taiwan] Strait are totally false.”

“Telling another country that ‘you cannot be friends with so-and-so’ is extremely childish,” it said.

Members of the US Congress make routine visits to Taiwan as they have done for many years, the ministry said, adding that Taipei has since the beginning of the year hosted 14 House members, including Pelosi, six US government representatives and seven US senators.

“The precedent for a speaker of the House to visit Taiwan has already been established, and the exchange of visits by parliamentarians and officials is entirely normal in democracies,” it said, referring to the then-House speaker Newt Gingrich’s visit in 1997.

China’s use of Pelosi’s visit as a pretext for conducting dangerous military drills has caused regional tensions to rise, it said, calling the drills a deviation from the rules governing the conduct of civilized people.

“It is crystal clear that the ongoing crisis is of China’s making, that Beijing is to blame for taking provocative and escalatory actions” in the Strait, the ministry said.

Beijing’s live-fire missile tests off Taiwan proper, crossings of the Strait’s median line by ships and planes, and intrusions into Taiwan’s air defense identification zone have shown that China is the real troublemaker in the Strait, it said.

The irresponsible firing of ballistic missiles has disrupted maritime traffic in one of the world’s most important sea routes and interfered with Japan’s exclusive economic zone, it added.

Taiwan and China are mutually non-subordinate entities, and Taiwan has never been ruled by China, the ministry said.

“China has no right to interfere in Taiwan’s efforts to make friends with any country in the world,” the ministry said.

In related news, the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs on Friday announced that Beijing would “adopt sanctions on Pelosi and her immediate family members in accordance with relevant laws of China.”

Pelosi’s grandson Paul Vos was quoted by the South China Morning Post as asking: “Am I supposed to be scared? What are they going to do? Cancel my TikTok?”

“For the record, I am not even on TikTok,” he added.

新聞來源：TAIPEI TIMES