Taipei, Taiwan CNN — Defying Beijing’s repeated threats, Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen and US House Speaker Kevin McCarthy presented a carefully choreographed united front in California on Wednesday against an increasingly powerful and aggressive China. For Taiwan, the rare high-level, bipartisan meeting is a timely show of US support, as China ramps up diplomatic and military pressure on the self-ruling island it claims as part of its territory. But the encounter also carries great risks: the last time Tsai met with a US House Speaker – during Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taipei last August, Beijing retaliated by holding days of...