Skip to main content

Transcript of Ranking Member Raja Krishnamoorthi’s Remarks at Meeting Between Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-Wen and Bipartisan Group of Lawmakers

April 5, 2023

SIMI VALLEY, CA – Today, a group of bipartisan lawmakers met with Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-Wen at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library to discuss the mutual security and economic interests between America and Taiwan. Below is a transcript of the remarks made by Ranking Member Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-IL).

Thank you very much, Chairman, and thank you, Speaker McCarthy, for convening this bipartisan meeting. Thank you, Chairman Aguilar, for leading our House Democratic caucus and being present. Thank you to all my fellow members, and of course, thank you to the Reagan Foundation for hosting us, and for a wonderful visit.

We had a wonderful set of meetings with President Tsai, and it reminded me of something that actually President Reagan said, 40 years ago, at the 40th founding of the United Nations. He asked the following question, he said, “What kind of a people do we want to be, 40 years from now?”

Well today, we can agree with what he said should be the answer, which is that, “We want to be a free people, firm in the conviction that freedom is not the sole prerogative of a chosen few, but rather the entitlement of all of God’s children.”

In that regard, Taiwan deserves to be free. Taiwan’s people deserve freedom, and they have earned that right. The CCP has promised that if they reunify with Taiwan, they will provide a ‘One China, Two Systems’ policy.  In Hong Kong, we’ve seen such a policy, in name, being implemented. Unfortunately for us, and to many others, it looks like a ‘One China, One System’ policy, and freedom, unfortunately, has not been compatible with that one system. And so that’s why our bond with the Taiwanese people is unshakeable. We will always support them in defending their freedom.

And to our strategic competitors in the CCP, we say to them with one voice: We do not want war. We don’t want a cold war, we don’t want a hot war, we don’t want any hostilities whatsoever. We want peace. We are a peace-loving people, but we want a durable peace, and we must deter aggression at all costs. We must peacefully resolve all differences between and among us at the bargaining table.

So with that said, I want to say thank you so much, and I want to now welcome Chairman Smith of the Ways and Means Committee to address us.

###