CNN reporting this morning that house Speaker Nancy
Pelosi is expected to visit Taiwan during her high
profile trip to Asia. Another report cites a senior US
and Taiwanese official. It's still unclear though when
this visit will happen. It comes despite warnings from
Russia from china. Excuse me to the U.S. Not to
interfere with Taiwan for more on the developing news.
Let's turn to Beijing correspondent right now. Patric
Patrick, good morning to you. This was a big headline
when the news alert started going off about an hour ago.
So what can you tell us about this visit Because it did
appears it was not only official schedule and then all
of a sudden reporting today she says that Speaker
Pelosi is going to go what do we know and explain to
folks why this is so controversial and potentiall
provocative. Okay yeah well loo I think we need to
wait to get further confirmation on those reports.
didn't have any thing on that on nancy Pelosi's agenda
earlier. So this is all a bit of a fresh developments.
We will be waiting to hear whether or not that is
accurate or not. There are lots of rumors I should say
about the possibility of a visit to Taiwan notably a
reporter from the Taiwanese tv network tvbs by the name
of Liu Tingting wrote a tweet earlier today saying that
according to her sources that Pelosi would be arriving
there on Tuesday night. You have to question how wise
it is to be spreading that sort of information on a
topic that is really so sensitive as we know China
regards Taiwan as part of its sovereign territory. But
in many ways Beijing has made this decision very, very
difficult for nancy Pelosi, Pel or the nor the U.S.
Want to be seen to be backing down to chinese
aggression. But at the same time a lot of people might
say, you know, what exactly is there to be gained out
of this visit And is it being done simply out of
principle The stakes are incredibly high and we're
gonna be watching those developments very very closely
over the next few days. Now, China has threatened a
military response if Pelosi does visit. That has been
the uh you know the headline the past few days. So how
likely is it that china would escalate the situation to
um using military force Well, it's alluded to using
military force but it hasn't actually specified wheth
the response would be diplomati or or military one. We
did hear more from the Foreign Ministry in Beijing
Will you echoing a lot of the fiery rhetoric that we'v
been hearing over the past week and the build up to
this tour of Asia, it said that the military would no
sit idly by spokesperson julie Jan also spelled out why
there has been this particularly sharp response fro
china. It was something that we were we were aware of
previously of course. But Jan was explicit about it. He
said that nancy Pelosi is the number three US
government official and that any visit to Taiwan would
lead to an egregious political impact. But she has
landed in Singapore today. She met with Prime Minister
Lee Hsien Loong. They talked about a range of topics
including the war in Ukraine cross strait relations
well as climate change and the Foreign Ministry. And
Singapore noted that the Singaporean prime Minister had
said to Nancy Pelosi or stressed the importance of
stable relations between the US and china for the sake
of maintaining peace and security in the region. Well,
it will be heavily scrutinized no matter what happ
here because on the one hand uh I'm sure she doesn't
wanna look weak or have the US look weak. But on the
other hand we don't want to do anything that's
potentially provocative and further complicated. Very
critical relationship between t U.S. And and china.
She was supposed to go in april but backed out because
she got COVID at the time and now here we are with
these reports this morning that she indeed we'll be
there the first U.S. Speaker potentially to visit
Taiwan since New Gingrich back in the late nineties
Patrick reporting live from Beijing when New Year will
be on top of this story. We'll check back later.
so much