Pro-Taiwan protesters gather at LA airport for President’s visit

Pro and Anti-Taiwan protesters gathered at Los Angeles airport for the arrival of Taiwan's president Tsai Ing-wen on Wednesday before a meeting with US House Speaker Kevin McCarthy.

On Tuesday night, protesters gathered outside Tsai's LA hotel, banging drums, chanting and holding Taiwanese flags and photos of the president, who shook hands with supporters as she entered. A smaller, pro-Beijing group gathered nearby on the pavement, separated by a police line, chanting One China Tsai is on her way home from a state visit to two of Taiwan's formal diplomatic allies, Guatemala and Honduras. She will talk to McCarthy at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, just outside LA, for closed-door meetings, before making public statements. The security preparations at the venue began days ago, according to media traveling with Tsai.

The meeting has sparked an angry reaction from Beijing, which has called it a provocation and threatened retaliation.

Neither the US or Taiwan have backed off from the meeting. The ministry of foreign affairs of Taiwan said this week that Beijing's objections were increasingly absurd and unreasonable, while the US warned Beijing not to use the normal visit as a pretext for hostile action.

The White House spokeswoman, Karine Jean-Pierre, told reporters on Tuesday that Tsai s transit was private and unofficial. Tsai herself has made this transit about six times before, and there should be no reason for China to overreact, she said.

Beijing claims that Taiwan is a province of China, but it has not ruled out using force to annex, and has accused Tsai and her government of being separatists. Tsai says Taiwan, an independent functioning democracy, is already a sovereign nation and its future is up to its people to decide.

A visit by the then speaker Nancy Pelosi to Taiwan prompted Beijing to surround the main island with days of live-fire military exercises. McCarthy had expressed a wish to visit Taiwan, and the Wednesday meeting in LA instead of Taiwan is understood to be an attempt by Tsai to reduce the impact.

It is not clear what action Beijing intends to take in response to the meeting. Before Tsai s 10 day trip began, defence authorities in Taiwan said they had not noticed any escalated Chinese military activity.

The Fujian maritime safety administration has announced a joint sea patrol of the central and northern parts of the Taiwan Strait. The administration provided few details but said that it was a special patrol and inspection operation led by its largest and most advanced maritime patrol ship, the Haixun 06. It was not clear if it was linked to the Tsai meeting.

The past week also saw the continuation of Chinese sorties into Taiwan's air defence identification zone, with some sizeable groups of warplanes crossing the median line as a de facto border in the Taiwan Strait.

On Tuesday, Tsai met with US security officials in a video call from Belize to discuss the regional situation before her trip. She expressed her gratitude to colleagues who were sticking to their responsibilities to ensure national security during a long weekend holiday this week.

The president is expected to leave LA on Friday for Taiwan. Her 10 day trip included an initial US stopover in New York, where she met the House Democrats leader, Hakeem Jeffries, before she went on to Belize and Guatemala to reaffirm diplomatic relations with the governments there. The two countries are the last remaining formal allies in Central America after Honduras cut ties on the eve of Tsai's trip.

There are now 13 countries that recognize Taiwan's formal name as the Republic of China. Nine have switched to Beijing, which doesn't allow countries to recognise both governments and seeks to lure away all those who choose Taiwan.