TAIPEI (Taiwan News) — U.S. Representative Mike Gallagher, chairman of the House select committee on China, on Saturday (April 8) vowed to do all he can to bolster Taiwan’s defensive capability and urge congress to speed up weapons deliveries to the nation.

“We need to be moving heaven and earth to enhance our deterrence and denial posture, so that Xi Jinping concludes that he just can’t do it,” AP quoted Gallagher as saying.

Ahead of President Tsai Ing-wen’s (蔡英文) meeting with U.S. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, China had warned U.S. lawmakers not to join, Gallagher said. However, they still attended the meeting.

Beijing also said it would conduct a joint military “patrol and inspection” of waters around Taiwan on Wednesday (April 5).

U.S. lawmakers will not be intimidated by the Chinese, he said. “It’s an attempt to shift the ideological battle space and, again, an attempt to intimidate us, and make us feel like we’re changing the status quo and provoking them, when the opposite is true.”

The representative said he wants congress to ramp up its military commitments to Taiwan. One idea that was proposed during the meeting was for the U.S. to aid Taiwan with technology to manufacture its own defense systems.

House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee Chairperson Michael McCaul, who traveled to Taiwan for a three-day visit, promised Tsai that arms deliveries would continue. Congress is doing all it can to have shipments expedited, and to offer military training assistance, he said.

In response to the Tsai-McCarthy meeting, China announced on Saturday it would conduct a three-day drill around Taiwan. The Chinese Ministry of National Defense said in a statement that the People's Liberation Army's Eastern Theater Command will organize a “combat readiness patrol” and a “united sword” drill in the Taiwan Strait and the airspace to the north, south, and east of Taiwan.

Beijing also placed sanctions on Taiwan’s envoy to the U.S. Hsiao Bi -khim (蕭美琴), Washington, D.C.-based think tank Hudson Institute, the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, California, and two Taiwanese organizations, The Prospect Foundation and the Council of Asian Liberals and Democrats.