Xi will slowly squeeze fight out of rebel island

It had seemed almost certain at one time – certainly among the zealots campaigning for Taiwan’s unification with China – that Beijing would use military force to prevent Nancy Pelosi from visiting the self-governed island Beijing claims as its own and use the occasion to seize the territory.

Beijing broadcast video of its hypersonic DF-17 missile and images of its soldiers vowing to fight and bury all the country’s enemies. However, as Pelosi’s plane took off on Tuesday from Malaysia for Taipei’s Songshan airport, the drumrolls slowed and China softened its rhetoric, making it clear that there would be no military action directed at the Speaker of the US House of Representatives or the island.

Experts believe that Beijing will not engage in war in the Taiwan Strait, at least not this year.

While a military conflict can bolster a leader’s status, there is no incentive for President Xi Jinping to gamble his already-secured third term weeks before the party holds a national congress and anoints him. Some in the party argue that a war would not help Xi’s goal but would only upset any pre-congress arrangements. Beijing also knows that it is no rival to Washington in terms of military might, at least not yet.

Beijing has other worries. It needs to revive the economy, which has been battered by its zero-Covid policy. The country’s second-quarter growth was 0.4%, far below the annual target of 5.5%.

Last week, the party’s policymaking political bureau said the goal for the second half of this year was to keep the economy running ‘‘within a reasonable range’’ and implied that it had accepted that some provinces would not hit annual targets.

Another clear sign that China was not intending to use force over Pelosi’s trip came when Wang Yi, the foreign minister, issued a statement condemning America’s ‘‘bullying’’ but fell short of mentioning any military option.

‘‘Some US politicians, out of personal interests, are playing with fire on the Taiwan issue and making themselves the enemy of the 1.4 billion Chinese people,’’ Wang said. ‘‘They will not end well.’’

Then the central office of the Youth League, a division of the ruling party tasked with promoting patriotism among the young, ran an article describing Pelosi as a mere ‘‘chess piece’’.

‘‘The rivalry between China and the US is a big chess game,’’ it said. ‘‘And there’s no need to overturn the entire chess board over one chess piece.’’