By Hussein Waaile, Michael Martina and Ben Blanchard
NEW&nbsp;YORK/TAIPEI (Reuters) -Taiwan&nbsp;has remained&nbsp;calm&nbsp;in the&nbsp;face&nbsp;of&nbsp;China&nbsp;"deliberately"&nbsp;raising&nbsp;tensions,&nbsp;President&nbsp;Tsai&nbsp;Ing-wen told an event during a stopover in&nbsp;New&nbsp;York&nbsp;that so far, according to Taipei and Washington, has not triggered unusual military actions by&nbsp;China.
Tsai&nbsp;arrived in&nbsp;New&nbsp;York&nbsp;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 U.S. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, an interaction&nbsp;China&nbsp;has warned could lead to a "serious confrontation" in U.S.-China&nbsp;relations.
The visit comes at a time when U.S. relations with&nbsp;China&nbsp;are at what some analysts see as their worst level since Washington normalized ties with Beijing in 1979 and switched diplomatic recognition from Taipei.
Beijing&nbsp;says&nbsp;Taiwan&nbsp;belongs to "one&nbsp;China" and, as a Chinese province, has no right to state-to-state ties.&nbsp;Taiwan&nbsp;disputes this.
Tsai, on her first U.S. stopover since 2019, told an event held by the Hudson Institute think tank that the fault for&nbsp;raising&nbsp;tensions&nbsp;lay with&nbsp;China, according to excerpts of her comments reported by&nbsp;Taiwan's official Central&nbsp;News Agency.
"China&nbsp;deliberately raises&nbsp;tensions, but&nbsp;Taiwan&nbsp;always responds cautiously and&nbsp;calmly, so that the world can see that&nbsp;Taiwan&nbsp;is the responsible party in cross-Strait relations," the agency cited her saying.
"The people of&nbsp;Taiwan&nbsp;look forward to peace, but history tells us that the best way to avoid war is to make ourselves stronger,"&nbsp;Tsai&nbsp;said at the event, where she received a leadership award.
An unstable&nbsp;Taiwan&nbsp;Strait will bring the world serious economic and security risks, and it is important for all countries to maintain peace and stability in the region, she added.
Taiwan's de facto embassy in the U.S. has said all of her engagements in&nbsp;New&nbsp;York&nbsp;are closed to media and public.
NO CHINESE MILITARY ACTION
Taiwan's defense ministry, in its daily update on&nbsp;China's military activities, said that from Wednesday to Thursday morning it had not spotted any Chinese aircraft entering&nbsp;Taiwan's air defense zone or crossing the median line of the&nbsp;Taiwan&nbsp;Strait, which serves as an unofficial barrier.
China's air force flies almost daily into the air defense zone, or across the median line, in which&nbsp;Taiwan&nbsp;calls "grey zone" warfare designed to test and wear out its forces.
A senior&nbsp;Taiwan&nbsp;security official said earlier that the island expects a less severe reaction from Beijing to a&nbsp;Tsai-McCarthy meeting than when then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi visited Taipei last year, something that prompted&nbsp;China&nbsp;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&nbsp;Taiwan,"&nbsp;Taiwan&nbsp;National Security Bureau Director-General&nbsp;Tsai&nbsp;Ming-yen told&nbsp;Taiwan's parliament.
He added that&nbsp;Taiwan&nbsp;had been conducting dry runs on responses to a rise in&nbsp;tensions&nbsp;while the&nbsp;president&nbsp;is away, including when she is flying, and that she can be reached at any time to meet her top security officials.
The White House, which urged&nbsp;China&nbsp;on Wednesday not to use&nbsp;Tsai's "normal" stopover in the U.S. as a pretext to increase aggressive activity against&nbsp;Taiwan, also said it had seen "no tangible reaction" yet from&nbsp;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.
MCCARTHY MEETING
A meeting with McCarthy would be the first between a&nbsp;Taiwanese leader and a U.S. House Speaker on U.S. soil, although it is seen as a potentially less provocative alternative to McCarthy visiting&nbsp;Taiwan, something he has said he hopes to do.
As House speaker, McCarthy is third in the U.S. leadership succession hierarchy.&nbsp;China&nbsp;has repeatedly warned U.S. officials not to meet&nbsp;Tsai, seeing it as showing support for the island's desire to be recognized as a separate country.
China's&nbsp;Taiwan&nbsp;Affairs Office spokesperson Zhu Fenglian said in Beijing on Wednesday that if&nbsp;Tsai&nbsp;met with McCarthy,&nbsp;China&nbsp;would "definitely take measures to resolutely fight back".
Xu Xueyuan, charge d'affaires at&nbsp;China's Washington embassy, said such a meeting "could lead to another serious confrontation in the&nbsp;China-U.S. relationship."
Washington, like most countries, maintains only unofficial ties with Taipei, but U.S. law requires the government to provide the island with the means to defend itself and it facilitates unofficial stopover visits.
The U.S. transit is&nbsp;Tsai's seventh since taking office in 2016 and comes amid concerns in the U.S. and elsewhere that Russia's invasion of Ukraine might embolden&nbsp;China&nbsp;to move against&nbsp;Taiwan.
(Reporting by Ben Blanchard, Roger Tung, Michael Martina and David Brunnstrom; Editing by Michael Perry, Raju Gopalakrishnan, Josie Kao and Lincoln Feast.)

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Taiwan calm in face of China raising tensions, President Tsai says in New York