U.S. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy met Wednesday with Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen in California, calling her "a great friend to America."
At the start of their meeting, McCarthy said, "I am optimistic we will continue to find ways for the people of America and Taiwan to work together to promote economic freedom, democracy, peace and stability."
Tsai responded by saying, "We're stronger when we work together."
But she also warned that military threats from China, which claims Taiwan as part of its territory, "cannot be understated." She said Taiwan seeks "a peaceful status quo" and "strives to be a reliable partner to the world."
The planned talks have prompted opposition from China, with Beijing announcing a joint cruise and patrol operation in the north-central part of the Taiwan Strait, while the People's Liberation Army said it had deployed two destroyers and a frigate to the East China Sea for live-fire drills.
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Both operations were believed to be a rebuke to Taiwan for the president's two stopovers in the United States in less than a week.
Chinese authorities did not elaborate on the Taiwan Strait operation or whether the Chinese Navy was joining it with surveillance vessels.
“This is not our intention to escalate,” McCarthy told reporters during a bipartisan press conference with the full delegation. “We want to continue to build and foster democracy and freedom. There should be no fear.”
U.S. Representative Hakeem Jeffries, the Democratic minority leader in the House of Representatives, said he met with Tsai last week in New York.
"We had a very productive conversation about the mutual security and economic interests between America and Taiwan," Jeffries said. "We also discussed our shared commitment to democracy and freedom."
Jeffries said in a statement that his meeting with Tsai "is consistent with and represents no deviation from the long-standing unofficial relationship between the United States and Taiwan."
The U.S. has a "One China" policy, which acknowledges that Beijing considers Taiwan to be part of China. But it nonetheless sends military aid to the self-governed island to help it defend itself.
U.S. President Joe Biden has frequently said the U.S. would militarily defend Taiwan if China were to invade it, although the U.S. has quickly said its “One China” policy has not changed.
But Representative Raja Krishnamoorthi, the ranking member on the House Select Committee on China, said the Chinese Communist Party’s promise to provide a one-China, two-systems policy if the nation were to reunify with Taiwan does not appear to be compatible after the world watched how the system was implemented in Hong Kong.
“That's why our bond with the Taiwanese people is unshakeable. We will always support them in defending their freedom,” Krishnamoorthi said.
McCarthy told reporters he would like to see the Biden administration speed up its transfer of weapons delivery systems to Taiwan.
Tsai has not visited Washington and has said she is transiting through the U.S., with her two stops sandwiched around a visit to Central American allies Guatemala and Belize. Honduras recently announced it was cutting ties with Taiwan in favor of China.
Last year, Tsai hosted then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in Taiwan, and China reacted by holding its largest live-fire military drills in decades around Taiwan.
China's consulate in Los Angeles said ahead of Wednesday's Tsai-McCarthy meeting that she was engaging in such talks to "put on a political show."
Jerome Cohen, a retired professor at New York University's School of Law, told VOA that by meeting McCarthy in California, Tsai took a more diplomatic route than hosting McCarthy in Taiwan and potentially reigniting the kind of response that China had to Pelosi's visit.
"There should be no basis for a strong Beijing reaction," Cohen told VOA's Mandarin Service. "It makes the PRC, the People's Republic of China, look very bad and immature at a time when Beijing and Washington should be trying to come together to improve relations, not to make them worse."
Robert Ross, a professor of political science at Boston College, told VOA that Wednesday's meeting is not necessarily about delivering any concrete results.
"For Tsai Ing-wen, this is about simply establishing a presence in the world, establishing her presence as the leader of Taiwan and her success in meeting with American leaders," Ross said.
"For the speaker, his objective is to establish his credentials as a supporter of Taiwan and as someone who opposes China. The meeting with the president of Taiwan allows him to say 'I am standing up to China. They don't want me to do this, but I am going to do it anyway.'"
VOA's Mandarin service contributed to this report. Some information for this report came from The Associated Press, Agence France-Presse and Reuters.
