Pelosi made her comments on Wednesday during a Presidential Office ceremony with Taiwanese leader Tsai Ing-wen. The California Democrat’s arrival in Taiwan late Tuesday made her the highest-ranking US official to visit in a quarter century, and the most high-profile success in Tsai’s six-year drive to attract greater foreign support and reduce reliance on China.
Tsai said Pelosi’s visit showed Taiwan’s staunch international support in the face of a years-long international pressure campaign led by Beijing, which claims the island as its territory. “Facing deliberately heightened military threats, Taiwan will not back down,” Tsai said, after conferring an award on the visiting US lawmaker.
On Wednesday, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi called Pelosi’s trip a “complete farce” and warned “those who offend China will be punished.” Still, China’s failure to follow through on some of the more extreme measures proposed by nationalists to stop Pelosi from visiting TaiwanTaiwanese shares closed 0.2% higher while China’s benchmark CSI 300 Index ended the day 1% lower. Pelosi’s US military plane left Taiwan at 6:01 p.m.
Andrew Gilholm, director of analysis for China and North Asia at Control Risks, said Pelosi’s pledge not to abandon Taiwan was “deliberately vague and rather meaningless.”