Pelosi’s visit a test of status under pressure
United States House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, meeting leaders in Taiwan despite warnings from China, says she and other members of Congress in a visiting delegation are showing that they will not abandon their commitment to the self-governing island.
‘‘Today the world faces a choice between democracy and autocracy,’’ Pelosi said in a short speech during a meeting with Taiwan’s President Tsai Ing-wen yesterday.
China, which claims Taiwan as its territory and opposes any engagement by Taiwanese officials with foreign governments, announced multiple military exercises around the island and issued a series of harsh statements in response.
China announced live-fire drills, as well as a four-day exercise beginning today in waters on all sides of the island. Its air force also flew a relatively large contingent of 21 warplanes toward Taiwan.
For Taiwan, a successful visit by Pelosi is about more than avoiding an immediate crisis in the Taiwan Strait. It is also an opportunity to signal to senior politicians around the world that they can show support for Taiwan’s democracy in person – despite vocal opposition from Beijing.
Pelosi’s visit fits within a broader trend of lawmakers from liberal democracies making more regular visits to Taiwan – especially in the context of the war in Ukraine, which has raised fears, both among Taiwanese and internationally, of an eventual Chinese attack.
The visit comes at a time when highlevel delegations from the US, European nations and other liberal democracies, as well as return visits from Taiwanese officials and politicians, are increasingly common, reflecting Tsai’s efforts to raise Taiwan’s international standing.
Within the last two weeks alone, foreign delegations included the vicepresident of the European Parliament, Nicola Beer; two former Japanese defence ministers; and two former Australian defence ministers. Members of the foreign affairs committee of the British House of Commons are planning a visit later this year.
China is especially concerned about the rising frequency of US-Taiwan diplomatic exchanges. Chinese scholars claim these represent a change in the US’s ‘‘One China’’ policy, which neither challenges nor endorses Beijing’s sovereignty claims over Taiwan.
The White House maintains that the US’s Taiwan policy has not changed.
For Tsai and many others in her Democratic Progressive Party, raising Taiwan’s international status is Taipei’s only viable response to a decades-long campaign by Beijing to isolate Taiwan by poaching diplomatic partners and seeking to bar its government from participation in multilateral forums and trade pacts.
Taiwanese analysts expect that China will go beyond large-scale military drills and adopt various forms of economic coercion to punish Taiwan for Pelosi’s visit. Taiwan’s Ministry of the Economy said Chinese customs had halted imports of thousands of Taiwanese goods, affecting about 65% of the products sent to China.
Any response by China had to consider the long-term interests of Beijing and avoid a ‘‘counter-reaction’’ of worsening the situation by making visiting Taiwan a kind of ‘‘pilgrimage’’ for US politicians, wrote Ren Yi, a Chinese political commentator.
Wen-Ti Sung, a political scientist at Australia National University’s Taiwan studies programme, said Chinese President Xi Jinping ‘‘faces a dilemma to optimise the robustness of China’s response to Pelosi’s visit’’.
‘‘If China doesn’t come up a strong response, then there is a risk that he will be seen as a weaker leader,’’ Sung said. ‘‘At the same time, though, right now what he wants and needs is stability.’’