Best way to avoid war is to make ourselves stronger, says Taiwan president during New York stopover

Pro-China demonstrators protest Taiwanese president’s visit to New York

Taiwanese president Tsai Ing-wen emphasised the island nation’s perseverance in the face of China's growing aggression during her stopover in New York on Thursday.

At a closed-door event hosted by the Hudson Institute think tank, she reportedly said the self-governed island is responsible and calm in contrast to China, which she said is raising tensions in cross-strait relations.

"She made a strong point that the defense of Taiwan is actually the defense of America," said Miles Yu, a Hudson Institute director who attended the speech.

"The people of Taiwan look forward to peace, but history tells us that the best way to avoid war is to make ourselves stronger," Ms Tsai said at the event, where she received a leadership award.

China has raised its concerns over Taiwan's visit to the US, which Taipei is billing as simply a "transit”, but she kept a full agenda of events Wednesday and Thursday before flying to Central America.

Ms Tsai is scheduled to make to stopovers in the US during her 10-day visit to Guatemala and Belize.

Dozens of pro-China demonstrators holding "One China" banners gathered behind police barricades outside the venue of the event.

China maintains that Taiwan is a part of its national territory, even though the island has been self-ruled since it split from the mainland in 1949 following a civil war. Beijing has beefed up its military activities around the island, including flying a record number of warplanes into its airspace.

Washington's "One-China" policy acknowledges that the Chinese claim Taiwan as their territory. However, the US, which is one of Taiwan's biggest allies, does not endorse China's claim and remains Taipei's most important provider of military hardware and other defense assistance.

On Friday, Taiwan's defence ministry said nine Chinese planes crossed the median line of the Taiwan Strait. Beijing's actions deliberately created tension in the Taiwan Strait, the ministry said, adding it condemned the irrational actions.

A day earlier Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson restated China's serious objections to any interactions between Ms Tsai and US leaders.

"China firmly opposes any form of official interaction between the US and Taiwan," Mao Ning told reporters on Thursday. "China will continue to closely follow the situation and resolutely safeguard our sovereignty and territorial integrity."

Taiwan’s president Tsai Ing-wen waves as she arrives at a hotel, in New York (AP)

A senior Chinese diplomat in Washington, embassy charge d'affaires Xu Xueyuan, pointed to the anticipated meeting between Tsai and the US House speaker Kevin McCarthy as one that could lead to a “serious confrontation” in US-China relations.

Meanwhile, senior security official in Taiwan said earlier that the island expects a less severe reaction from Beijing to a Tsai-McCarthy meeting than when then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi visited Taipei last year.

Beijing responded to Ms Pelosi's visit by staging major military drills around the island.

"She will be meeting in the United States, so the political complexity is not as high as the speaker coming to Taiwan," Taiwan national security bureau director-general Tsai Ming-yen told Taiwan's parliament.

He added that Taiwan had been conducting dry runs on responses to a rise in tensions while the president is away, including when she is flying, and that she can be reached at any time to meet her top security officials.

The White House, which urged China on Wednesday not to use Ms Tsai's "normal" stopover in the US as a pretext to increase aggressive activity against Taiwan, also said it had seen "no tangible reaction" yet from China.

"I think we've all seen them react in a rhetorical way, but we've seen no indication that there's been any other type of reaction," White House national security spokesperson John Kirby told reporters.