{"id":675816,"date":"2026-05-17T16:22:33","date_gmt":"2026-05-17T16:22:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/675816\/"},"modified":"2026-05-17T16:22:33","modified_gmt":"2026-05-17T16:22:33","slug":"conservative-mp-michael-chong-visits-taiwan-to-meet-president-in-defiance-of-china","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/675816\/","title":{"rendered":"Conservative MP Michael Chong visits Taiwan to meet President in defiance of China"},"content":{"rendered":"

Open this photo in gallery:<\/a><\/p>\n

Conservative MP Michael Chong rises during Question Period on Parliament Hill in Ottawa on April 14.Adrian Wyld\/The Canadian Press<\/p>\n

A Canadian MP has arrived in Taiwan to meet President Lai Ching-te in defiance of a recent warning from China\u2019s ambassador against further trips to the self-governed island by Parliamentarians from Canada.<\/p>\n

Beijing considers the democracy of 24 million people a breakaway province despite the fact China<\/a>\u2019s governing Communist Party has never ruled the territory since it took power more than 76 years ago.<\/p>\n

Conservative foreign affairs critic Michael Chong arrived in Taipei, the seat of Taiwan\u2019s government, on Sunday and is scheduled to meet with Mr. Lai, the Taiwanese president, on Wednesday.<\/p>\n

Mr. Chong, who\u2019s served as a Member of Parliament for more than two decades, said in a statement he made the voyage to Taiwan, 160 kilometres off the coast of China, to push back against a recent warning by China\u2019s envoy to Canada, Wang Di.<\/p>\n

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Mr. Wang, in an interview with the Globe and Mail April 30, warned that a new strategic partnership that Prime Minister Mark Carney struck with Chinese President Xi Jinping would be damaged if Canada sent any more warships through the Taiwan Strait or allowed any more MPs or senators to visit the small democracy.<\/p>\n

The ambassador appeared to be laying out expectations for Canada\u2019s behaviour as the two countries attempt to build on a truce reached in January, 2026, when Mr. Carney and Chinese President Xi Jinping reached a breakthrough after a painful trade war and years of frosty relations.<\/p>\n

China is trying to increasingly diplomatically isolate Taiwan in an effort to take over the island. While few countries have official diplomatic relations with Taiwan, Western countries have built robust unofficial ties to the island.<\/p>\n

The Chinese ambassador in his interview last month with the Globe did not distinguish between MPs with the governing Liberal Party and opposition parties including the Conservatives. He said all should stop visiting.<\/p>\n

In January, two Canadian MPs from the governing Liberal caucus cut short a trip to Taiwan just before the parliamentary delegation they were with was due to meet Taiwanese President Lai and other officials. This happened shortly before Mr. Carney\u2019s meeting in Beijing with Mr. Xi. The MPs said they were returning home three days early \u201cinformed by advice from\u201d the Canadian government. <\/p>\n

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The People\u2019s Republic of China (PRC) bristles against what it considers foreign interference and has reserved the right to use force to annex Taiwan, where Nationalist forces fled after they lost a civil war to the Communists.<\/p>\n

Canadian MPs and senators visit Taiwan regularly on trips paid for by the Taiwanese government \u2013 and have done so since at least the 1980s. The trips have normally included meetings with Taiwan\u2019s government leaders.<\/p>\n

Mr. Chong said this trip is financed with his own money.<\/p>\n

He said Taiwan is an important partner for Canada. In recent years the island was Canada\u2019s 15th largest trading partner and the six biggest in Asia.<\/p>\n

Mr. Chong said this trip to Taiwan has two purposes: \u201cto show solidarity with a democracy at the front lines of intimidation from the People\u2019s Republic of China\u201d and to \u201cassert Canadian sovereignty in the face of a warning from the PRC\u2019s ambassador to Canada about Canadian MPs travelling to Taiwan.\u201d <\/p>\n

He said he also plans to meet minister Jen-Ni Yang, chief trade negotiator at Taiwan\u2019s Office of Trade Negotiations as well as Chen Ming-chi, deputy minister of foreign affairs and officials at Canada\u2019s trade office in Taipei.<\/p>\n

\u201cDuring my visit to Taiwan, I will be meeting with Dr. Lai Ching-te, President of the Republic of China (Taiwan), Jen-Ni Yang, Minister and Trade Representative, and Dr. Chen Ming-chi, Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs. I will also be meeting with officials at the Canadian Trade Office in Taipei.<\/p>\n

\u201cCanada is a sovereign and independent country. We do not take direction from a foreign government about where Canadian MPs can travel internationally, and where Royal Canadian Navy warships can transit in international waters,\u201d Mr. Chong said.<\/p>\n

China has been taking steps to cut off Taiwan from the international community, including denying it the chance to participate in global bodies such as the World Health Organization\u2019s regular assemblies, and persuading countries that still recognize the island as a sovereign country to sever relations. In 2000, Taiwan had official diplomatic relations with 29 member states of the United Nations, as well as the Holy See; today the number has dropped to 11 and the Vatican.<\/p>\n

Last week Defence Minister David McGuinty declined to say whether Canada would continue sending warships through the Taiwan Strait after the warning from China\u2019s ambassador.<\/p>\n

Mr. McGuinty cited operational security as a reason for not answering.<\/p>\n

\u201cThose are operational questions, security questions \u2013 I don\u2019t get into that,\u201d he said in an interview Thursday.<\/p>\n

The Globe and Mail had not asked about the timing or routes of future ship movements, but rather whether Canada would maintain or abandon a policy of transiting through the strait.<\/p>\n

Despite declining to discuss Canada\u2019s policy going forward, Mr. McGuinty said he nevertheless regards the waterway between China and Taiwan to be international waters. China, by comparison, considers the Taiwan Strait to be an internal waterway.<\/p>\n

From 2018 until the resignation of former prime minister Justin Trudeau last year, Canadian warships transited the Taiwan Strait 11 times \u2013 over the objections of Beijing.<\/p>\n

Under Mr. Carney\u2019s government, this has happened only once. A Canadian frigate made a single trip, in September, 2025, along with an Australian destroyer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Open this photo in gallery: Conservative MP Michael Chong rises during Question Period on Parliament Hill in Ottawa…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":675817,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[49,48,44,714],"class_list":["post-675816","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-canada","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-news","tag-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/675816","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=675816"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/675816\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/675817"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=675816"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=675816"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=675816"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}