Tsai arrived in New York on Wednesday on her way to Central America, and on her way back to Taipei next week will stop in Los Angeles where she is expected to meet US House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, an interaction China has warned could lead to a "serious confrontation" in US-China relations.
The visit comes at a time when US relations with China are at what some analysts see as their worst level since Washington normalised ties with Beijing in 1979 and switched diplomatic recognition from Taipei.
Beijing says Taiwan belongs to "one China" and, as a Chinese province, has no right to state-to-state ties. Taiwan disputes this.
Tsai, on her first US stopover since 2019, told an event held by the Hudson Institute think tank that the fault for raising tensions lay with China, according to excerpts of her comments reported by Taiwan's official Central News Agency.
"China deliberately raises tensions, but Taiwan always responds cautiously and calmly, so that the world can see that Taiwan is the responsible party in cross-Strait relations," the agency cited her saying.
"The people of Taiwan look forward to peace, but history tells us that the best way to avoid war is to make ourselves stronger," Tsai said at the event, where she received a leadership award.
An unstable Taiwan Strait would bring the world serious economic and security risks, and it was important for all countries to maintain peace and stability in the region, she said.
Taiwan's de facto embassy in the US has said all her engagements in New York were closed to the media and public.
Taiwan's defence ministry said that from Wednesday to Thursday morning it had not detected any Chinese aircraft entering Taiwan's air defence zone or crossing the median line of the Taiwan Strait, which serves as an unofficial barrier.
A senior Taiwan security official said earlier that the island expected a less severe reaction from Beijing to a Tsai-McCarthy meeting than when then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi visited Taipei last year, something that prompted China to stage major military drills.
"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.
The White House, which urged China on Wednesday not to use 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.
A meeting with McCarthy would be the first between a Taiwanese leader and a US House Speaker on US soil, although it is seen as a potentially less provocative alternative to McCarthy visiting Taiwan, something he has said he hopes to do.
As Speaker, McCarthy is third in the US leadership succession hierarchy. China has repeatedly warned US officials not to meet Tsai, seeing it as showing support for the island's desire to be recognised as a separate country.
China's Taiwan Affairs Office spokesperson Zhu Fenglian said in Beijing on Wednesday that if Tsai met McCarthy, China would "definitely take measures to resolutely fight back".
