The foreign ministry says it is closely monitoring high-level talks between the United States and China.
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and China’s top diplomat, Yang Jiechi, met in Hawaii on Wednesday amid escalating tensions between the two powers.
On Thursday, foreign ministry spokesperson Joanne Ou said that Taiwan’s government will ask the US to brief Taiwan on the meeting as it has following other US-China meetings in the past.
Ou said that relations between Taiwan and the United States are “close and friendly” and that the channel of communication between the two sides is “very smooth.”
According to the US State Department, Pompeo and the Chinese Communist Party Politburo member Yang Jiechi exchanged views on US-China relations during their Wednesday meeting. The State Department says that Pompeo stressed the need for “fully-reciprocal dealings between the two nations across commercial, security, and diplomatic interactions”. He also called for “full transparency” regarding the COVID-19 pandemic.