The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of China on Friday sanctioned two US organizations, four of their employees, two Taiwanese organizations, their directors, and Taiwan's representative to the US.
The sanctions came after Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen and US lawmakers, among them US House of Representatives Speaker Kevin McCarthy, met at the Reagan Library in California on Wednesday.
The Ministry forbade Chinese entities from contact with the US organizations, saying: "The Hudson Institute and the Reagan Library have provided a platform and facilitated Tsai's separatist activities...which seriously undermines China's sovereignty and territorial integrity."
China applied similar sanctions to the Taiwanese Prospect Foundation and Council of Asian Liberals and Democrats.
The Ministry announced directors of the Taiwanese organizations, ex-Reagan Library executive director John Heubusch, Joanne M. Drake, the library's chief administrator, and Taiwan's representative to the US, Hsiao Bi-khim, were banned from entering China and any assets they may have held in the nation would be frozen.
Hudson Institute President John P. Walters, who was personally sanctioned along with the Insitute's board chair, Sarah May Stern, said in a statement: "The Chinese Communist Party has a long history of attempting to silence voices, domestically and abroad, that oppose its international aggression and its oppression of the Chinese people. It has not worked before and it will not work now. We stand firmly with Taiwan and against the CCP and its ruthless, genocidal policies."
Hsiao tweeted: "Wow, the PRC just sanctioned me again, for the second time." Hsiao was sanctioned in August following a visit by then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
Taiwan's foreign ministry called the sanctions "irrational and absurd" and asserted a "fundamental right" to pursue diplomatic aims abroad. China, which claims the island, said it has no authority to engage in diplomacy.
McCarthy became the highest-ranking American to meet a Taiwanese President on US soil since the US switched its recognition of "the sole legal government of China" from the Republic of China to the People's Republic of China.

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China sanctions US, Asian entities after Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen visits US