UK Foreign Secretary Cleverly Not Planning To Visit Taiwan - Foreign Office

MOSCOW (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 17th May, 2023) UK Foreign Secretary James Cleverly has no plans to visit Taiwan, UK Minister of State for Indo-Pacific Anne-Marie Trevelyan said on Tuesday.

"No visit to Taiwan is planned by the Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs. The UK has no diplomatic relations with Taiwan but a strong, unofficial relationship, based on deep and growing ties in a wide range of areas, and underpinned by shared democratic values," she said on the parliament website when asked whether Cleverly had plans to visit Taiwan in the next 12 months.

Earlier on Tuesday, the Taiwanese Central news Agency reported that former UK Prime Minister Liz Truss arrived at Taoyuan International Airport for a five-day working visit to the country and was welcomed by Taiwanese Foreign Minister Joseph Wu. On Wednesday morning, she is expected to give a speech in Taipei dubbed "Taiwan: On the Frontline of Freedom and Democracy."

The Chinese Embassy in London slammed Truss's visit as a "dangerous political show which will do nothing but harm to the UK," adding that "by playing the 'Taiwan card' and engaging in political shows, Truss and the like are colluding with the 'Taiwan independence' secessionist forces to provoke confrontation and escalate tensions across the Taiwan Strait.

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Last week, when Truss announced her visit, Alicia Kearns, the chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the UK parliament's lower house, harshly criticized her decision to visit Taiwan and called the trip "perfomative" and "the worst kind" of diplomacy for Instagram (banned in Russia over extremism), warning that it might cause a serious escalation in the region, as happened after the visit of then-US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to Taiwan in August 2022, as quoted by The Guardian.

Taiwan has been governed independently from mainland China since 1949. Beijing views the island as its province, while Taiwan � a territory with its own elected government � maintains that it is an autonomous country but stops short of declaring independence. Beijing opposes any official contacts of foreign states with Taipei and considers Chinese sovereignty over the island indisputable.