U.S. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy is planning to meet Taiwan’s president in the coming weeks when she visits California. The Financial Times reports Tsai Ing-wen convinced McCarthy to meet her on U.S. soil rather than in Taipei to avoid an aggressive Chinese military response. In Beijing, China’s new Foreign Minister Qin Gang condemned the U.S. stance over Taiwan Tuesday in his first news conference since taking office.

Qin Gang: “The Chinese people have every right to ask: Why does the U.S. talk at length about respecting sovereignty and territorial integrity on Ukraine while disrespecting China’s sovereignty and territorial integrity on the Taiwan question? Why does the U.S. ask China not to provide weapons to Russia while it keeps selling arms to Taiwan?”

Those remarks came as Chinese President Xi Jinping directly accused the United States of suppressing China’s development Monday in what The Wall Street Journal described as an “unusually blunt rebuke of U.S. policy.” Xi said, “Western countries — led by the U.S. — have implemented all-round containment, encirclement and suppression against us, bringing unprecedentedly severe challenges to our country’s development.”