Plane Flies ‘Taiwan Is Part of China’ Banner over Tsai-McCarthy Meeting

A small plane flew over the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, California, on Wednesday towing a banner that read “One China! Taiwan is part of China!” while House Speaker Kevin McCarthy met with Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen.

Meanwhile, a smaller group of pro-China agitators appeared outside the library and clashed with pro-Taiwan demonstrators.

Although many observers assumed the Chinese government paid directly for the plane, it was not immediately clear who financed the flight.

The Chinese Communist Party often relies on “volunteer” loyalists living in other countries to disrupt public events the Party disfavors, providing the authoritarian Chinese government with a layer of deniability.

A large group of pro-Taiwan demonstrators assembled outside the Reagan Library to greet Tsai. A smaller group of pro-China demonstrators gathered to wave Communist flags and heckle the Taiwan supporters, as observed by Rep. Carlos Gimenez (R-FL), who was part of the bipartisan congressional group that met with Tsai:

“I have a message to send to the world: America’s government must support China,” one of the pro-China demonstrators, a 62-year-old Chinese-born paralegal living in Koreatown named Nancy Yingli Son, told the L.A. Times.

Son appeared at the protest waving Communist Chinese and American flags and chanting “Taiwan is China’s territory! Taiwan is part of China!” in Mandarin. 

The L.A. Times reported “small scuffles” broke out between the two groups when “some of [Tsai’s] supporters tried to snatch signs from the pro-China crowd.” The two groups “engaged in occasional shouting matches” after the police separated them.

Taiwan-based Chinese-language NextApple, a surviving branch of the Apple Daily newspaper in Hong Kong shut down by the Chinese Communist Party in June 2021, claimed on Thursday that some of the pro-China demonstrators were “walking workers” paid up to $400 by the Chinese government to appear at the Reagan Library.

This report was based in part on the claims of a YouTuber who strolled through the pro-China crowd, pretending to be an enthusiastic American supporter of the regime in Beijing:

The South China Morning Post (SCMP) on Thursday judged that China’s reaction to the McCarthy-Tsai meeting has been relatively muted so far, with abundant verbal denunciations from nearly every wing of the vast Communist government but little in the way of concrete retaliatory action.

The SCMP took this as evidence that Beijing and Washington are “showing some willingness to contain the fallout.” De-escalatory measures from the Biden administration included sending no federal officials to meet with Tsai, Secretary of State Antony Blinken describing the Reagan Library meeting as “private” and “unofficial,” and the administration generally giving the event a “low profile.”