TAIPEI: Taiwanese President Lai Ching-te will stop over in Hawaii and Guam during his trip to the South Pacific, in a move expected to draw objection from China.
Lai is due to depart Taiwan on Saturday for a weeklong trip to visit the Marshall Islands, Tuvalu and Palau — three diplomatic allies of the self-ruled island.
On Thursday, Taiwan's Central News Agency, quoting an unnamed official at his office, reported that Lai would make stopovers in the US state and US island territory. His office on Friday confirmed to The Associated Press that the report was accurate.
Under pressure from China, which claims Taiwan as its own territory, the island has just 12 formal diplomatic allies. However, it retains strong contacts with dozens of other nations, including the US, its main source of diplomatic and military support.
Lai's upcoming stopovers are expected to trigger opposition from Beijing. When his predecessor Tsai Ing-wen began a stopover in the US on her way to Central America last year, China said it was closely watching and would “resolutely safeguard our sovereignty and territorial integrity.”
The Chinese military also launched drills around Taiwan last year as a “stern warning” over what it called collusion between “separatists and foreign forces" days after Lai, then Taiwanese vice-president, stopped over in the US.
China objects strongly to such US stopovers by Taiwan's leaders, as well as visits to the island by leading American politicians, terming them as violations of US commitments not to afford diplomatic status to Taiwan after Washington switched formal recognition from Taipei to Beijing in 1979.
With the number of its diplomatic partners declining under Chinese pressure, Taiwan has redoubled efforts to take part in international forums, even from the sidelines.