Taiwan Vice President Lai Ching-te is expected to transit through New York and San Francisco later this month en route to and from Paraguay, where he will attend a presidential inauguration ceremony, a senior foreign affairs official of the island said Wednesday.
Lai is expected to make stopovers in New York from Aug. 12 to 13 and San Francisco from Aug. 16 to 17 when he visits Taiwan's last ally in South America for the Aug. 15 ceremony for Paraguay's President-elect Santiago Pena, Vice Foreign Minister Alexander Tah-ray Yui said at the island's presidential office.
The vice president's planned U.S. transit is set to anger Beijing, which considers Taiwan as its own and opposes any official contact between other countries and the self-ruled democratic island.
Yui said Lai's stopovers were arranged with "comfort, safety, and dignity" in mind and should not provide an excuse for conflict.
The trip comes as the United States and China have increased high-level communications to explore the possibility of a summit between President Joe Biden and President Xi Jinping later this year, possibly on the sidelines of an international conference.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken last month called Lai's planned stopovers "very routine" given the travel distance and warned China against using "this transit as a pretext for provocative action."
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning said in July that China will closely follow the situation regarding Lai's trip and "take resolute and strong measures to safeguard sovereignty and territorial integrity."
She urged Washington not to send wrong signals to "Taiwan independence" forces.
Communist-led China and Taiwan have been governed separately since they split in 1949 due to a civil war. Beijing regards the territory as a renegade province and intends to unify it with the mainland, by force if necessary.
