A senior Pentagon official arrives in Taiwan amid heightened tension over spy balloons

17 Feb. (EUROPA PRESS) –

The deputy undersecretary of the United States Department of Defense, Michael Chase, arrived in Taiwan this Friday at the height of tension with China over the balloons detected in the last month.

His official visit to the island, which has been confirmed by a source close to the matter to the ‘Financial Times’ newspaper, takes place less than two weeks after the United States shot down an alleged Chinese spy balloon in its airspace, for which reason he hopes it will draw criticism from Beijing.

Likewise, a Pentagon spokesman has indicated in statements to the aforementioned medium that “US support for Taiwan, especially military, continues to be forceful in the face of the threat posed by China.”

The Chinese government, for its part, has anticipated any visit of this type and, given rumors of the arrival of a senior US government official, has expressed its “firm rejection of any official contact between the United States and Taiwan”.

Chase, who is in charge of China policy at the Pentagon, has thus become the first senior Pentagon official to visit the island in four years, when the Undersecretary for East Asia, Heino Klinck, traveled in 2019, becoming the most high office to visit Taiwan in four decades.