The possibility of U.S. house speaker Nancy Pelosi visiting Taiwan was raised with China’s foreign minister last month and there were no plans for the two countries’ top diplomats to meet this week in Cambodia, a senior U.S. official said on Wednesday. U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken discussed the potential for Pelosi’s visit with counterpart Wang Yi during a G20 meeting in Bali that lasted more than five hours, and said any such trip would be entirely Pelosi’s decision and independent of the U.S. government. “The question is whether Beijing will try to use the trip as some kind of excuse to take steps that could be escalatory or that could somehow produce conflict,” the senior State Department official told reporters in Tokyo, adding that Beijing should not overreact to a trip that was neither unusual nor unprecedented. “China should not use this as a pretext to continue what it’s been doing, which is seeking to change the status quo with regard to Taiwan,” the official said. “And if any escalation or crisis were to somehow follow her visit, it would be on Beijing.” (https://whtc.com/2022/08/03/chinas-top-diplomat-told-of-possible-pelosi-taiwan-trip-in-july-u-s-official-says/) The Chinese foreign ministry did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment on Wednesday. China vented its fury on Wednesday over what was the highest-level U.S. visit to Taiwan in a quarter of a century, stepping up military activity in surrounding waters and suspending imports of some products from Taiwan.
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