The US Department of Defense said on Monday that it has nothing to announce on House Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s potential visit to Taiwan this spring.
"We do not have anything to announce," the department told Sputnik in a statement.
Earlier in the day, media reported that the Pentagon is preparing for a trip by new Republican US House Speaker Kevin McCarthy to the breakaway Chinese province of Taipei within months.
McCarthy plans to follow in the footsteps of his octogenarian Democrat predecessor Nancy Pelosi, who staged a widely-mooted "surprise" visit to the island in August 2022 on board a US Air Force VIP jet.
Sources told a US media website that McCarthy would make the journey to the self-declared Republic of China (RoC) in Taiwan, which the US government still officially recognizes as a sovereign territory of the People's Republic of China (PRC), this spring.
McCarthy was elected as speaker of the House of Representatives two weeks ago at the 15th attempt. The Republican congressional leadership could barely scrape together enough votes, despite winning a narrow majority in the House in November's mid-term elections, thanks to a rebellion by conservatives concerned about the tens of billions of dollars funneled to Ukraine by Congress to prolong its conflict with Russia.
One of McCarthy's first acts as speaker was to to set up a select committee on "Strategic Competition between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party" — as many US conservatives refer to the Chinese state.
"The Select Committee will continue the critical work we began in the House China Task Force and shows that the Republican House is laser-focused on the CCP as an existential threat to our nation," said Texas representative and committee appointee Michael McCaul, who already chairs the Foreign Affairs Committee.
McCaul said the new body was "an opportunity for House Democrats to finally join bipartisan efforts to counter the CCP," saying they failed to do so with the congressional Department of Defense China Task Force founded in the final year of former President Donald Trump's administration.
Pelosi's trip to Taipei caused a major international incident. China mobilized large land, sea, and air forces before and during her visit, raising fears of a military intervention to take control of the island or even war between the PRC and US. Beijing slapped sanctions on Pelosi personally.
Washington has since moved to restrict trade with China in computer microchips and the materials used in their production — although many US tech firms still make chips at factories on the Chinese mainland.
Mainland China and Taiwan have had separate governments since the Chinese Revolution in 1949, when Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek's defeated Nationalist forces retreated to the island. Western nations initially recognized Taipei as the legitimate government over all of China, with the PRC initially denied membership of the United Nations despite its role in defeating the Japanese Empire during the Second World War.
But détente between Washington and Beijing in the late 1970s, following the Sino-Soviet split and US defeat in Vietnam, saw the 'One China Policy' inverted with the PRC recognized as the sole sovereign state.