Taiwan’s president Tsai Ing-wen has convinced US Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy to meet in California instead of in Taipei in a bid to avoid an aggressive response from Beijing.

McCarthy, a California Republican who became Speaker in January, had said last summer that he intended to visit Taiwan if elected to the leadership post.

But he and Tsai have now agreed to meet in California instead, to avoid a demonstration of force by the People’s Liberation Army similar to when then-speaker Nancy Pelosi visited Taiwan in August.

Pelosi’s visit was only the second Taiwan visit by a Speaker since Newt Gingrich in 1997. After her trip, the People’s Liberation Army held huge exercises, including firing missiles over Taiwan for the first time.

Tsai’s reluctance to have McCarthy visit signals the impact of China’s military posturing to constrain Taiwan and undermine its de facto independence.

“We shared some intelligence about what the Chinese Communist party is recently up to and the kinds of threats they pose,” a senior Taiwanese official said about information Taipei had provided to McCarthy’s team.

The official said China was “not in a good situation right now” and that it seemed more and more decisions would be made by Xi Jinping and his inner circle.

Tsai will visit both California and New York in early April as part of a trip to Central America. She has also decided to accept an invitation to speak at the Reagan Library in southern California, according to several people including a senior Taiwanese official.

The Taiwanese president, whose term ends in January, also visited the Reagan Library in 2018 and made remarks but not a formal speech.

McCarthy’s office declined to comment. The Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation and Institute confirmed that it had invited Tsai to speak.

The People’s Republic of China claims Taiwan as its territory although it has never ruled the island.

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