US Speaker meets Taiwan leader and stresses need to speed up arms deliveries

US House Speaker Kevin McCarthy hosted Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen in California on Wednesday, becoming the most senior US figure to meet a Taiwanese leader on US soil in decades and stressed the need to speed up arms deliveries to Taiwan in the face of increasing threats from China.

McCarthy - the third highest ranking official in the US leadership hierarchy - and other Republican and Democratic lawmakers met Tsai at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, California despite threats of retaliation from China, which claims self-ruled Taiwan as its own.

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China’s second aircraft carrier, the Shandong, is engaged in an exercise in the western Pacific amid heightened tensions across the Taiwan Strait over a meeting between President Tsai Ing-wen and Speaker of the United States House of Representatives Kevin McCarthy.

Taiwanese Defence Minister Chiu Kuo-cheng told reporters in parliament on Thursday that the aircraft carrier was 200 nautical miles (370km) off Taiwan’s east coast.