Pelosi reportedly set to visit Taiwan despite warnings from US and Chinese officials

Ms Pelosi would be the first US House speaker to visit the island since 1997

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is reportedly set to add a stop in Taiwan to the itinerary of a congressional trip she is leading to the Indo-Pacific, including an overnight stay in the Taiwanese capital, Taipei.

Over the weekend, Ms Pelosi departed Washington with a group of five other House members — House Foreign Affairs Committee chair Gregory Meeks, Veterans Affairs Committee chair Mark Takano, Ways and Means committee vice-chair Suzan DelBene, House Intelligence Committee member Raja Krishnamoorthi, and House Armed Services Committee member Andy Kim — with plans to visit Singapore, Malaysia, South Korea and Japan.

According to Ms Pelosi’s office, the trip is meant to focus on “mutual security, economic partnership and democratic governance in the Indo-Pacific region”. The California Democrat said she and her colleagues are looking forward to “productive meetings that will continue to inform Congress’s work to advance our values and interests and strengthen our partnerships in the region”.

Although Ms Pelosi’s public comments do not reflect an intent to visit Taiwan, CNN and others reported that a visit to the island is set to occur at some point during the trip and will include an overnight stay, citing comments from an anonymous “Taiwanese official”. The Financial Times has also reported that Ms Pelosi’s schedule will include a meeting with the Taiwanese president, Tsai Ing-wen.

The visit would be the first by a House speaker since then-speaker Newt Gingrich landed there in 1997, and would come despite warnings from Biden Administration officials as well as chinese president Xi Jinping that visiting the island would amount to Ms Pelosi “playing with fire”.

But a spokesperson for the National Security Council, John Kirby, told reporters on Monday that any visit by Ms Pelosi would be made on her own authority and would not reflect any change in US policy.

“The Speaker has the right to visit Taiwan and a Speaker of the House has visited Taiwan before without incident, as have many members of Congress including this year,” he said. “Nothing has changed about our ‘one China policy,’ which is, of course, guided by the Taiwan Relations Act, the three joint US-PRC communiques [and] the six assurances”.

Mr Kirby added that the US continues to oppose “unilateral changes to the status quo from either side”.