Pelosi’s Taiwan visit draws Beijing scorn, bipartisan support
China announces live-fire military drills nearby
TAIPEI, Taiwan — House Speaker Nancy Pelosi arrived in Taiwan on Tuesday, casting aside private warnings from the Biden administration about the risk that her high-profile diplomatic visit could stoke a new crisis in Asia and immediately prompting a sharp response from the Chinese government.
A US military jet carrying Pelosi landed in Taipei late at night following weeks of speculation about her travel plans. Her decision to proceed with the trip — shrouded in official secrecy until the last moment — makes her the highest-ranking congressional official to come to the disputed island in a quartercentury and sets up a tense standoff with China that US officials said could lead to more aggressive military posturing.
“America’s solidarity with the 23 million people of Taiwan is more important today than ever, as the world faces a choice between autocracy and democracy,” she said in a statement issued as she was greeted by Joseph Wu, Taiwan’s foreign minister, adding that the visit did not contradict US policy on Taiwan.
China, which bristles at any perceived challenge to its claims on self-ruled Taiwan, had repeatedly warned Pelosi not to make the visit. Soon after her arrival, Beijing announced plans for livefire military drills, some in areas overlapping with the island’s territorial waters. In a separate statement, China’s People’s Liberation Army said that it would begin a series of joint naval and air exercises that would include “long-range live firing in the Taiwan Strait.”
The exercises would effectively block access temporarily to some commercial shipping lanes and Taiwanese ports, but analysts said they seemed to be designed to project strength rather than to serve as a precursor to a Chinese invasion of Taiwan.
“They are not signaling that we are imminently about to go to war,” said Joe McReynolds, senior China analyst at the Washington-based Center for Intelligence Research and Analysis. But he and others said the fastmoving situation could lead to an accidental encounter that could spiral out of control.
Before the visit, the United States had urged Beijing not to turn the moment into a crisis. After a telephone call last week between President Biden and Xi Jinping, the president of China, the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs condemned Pelosi’s expected visit, saying that “playing with fire will set yourself on fire.”
But Pelosi, a longtime China critic who visited Tiananmen Square two years after the Chinese military opened fire on student protesters there, was defiant. In her statement, she said that her visit to the island 80 miles off the coast of China was a sign of America’s “unwavering commitment” to supporting Taiwan’s democracy.
“We must stand by Taiwan, which is an island of resilience,” Pelosi said in an opinion article published on the Washington Post website after she landed. In the article, she called Taiwan “a leader in governance,” a “leader in peace, security and economic dynamism,” and a “vibrant, robust democracy.”
In Taiwan’s central business district, Taipei 101, once the world’s tallest building and a major landmark in the city’s skyline, was lit with messages welcoming Pelosi, the highest-level US official to go to the island since 1997, when Newt Gingrich, then speaker of the House, made a visit.
Pelosi’s refusal to be dissuaded from making the trip is in keeping with her decades-long efforts to hold China accountable for its actions. She has repeatedly pushed for legislation to benefit Hong Kong and Tibet; hosted the Dalai Lama, the Tibetan spiritual leader; and urged a diplomatic boycott of the Olympics in Beijing.
Her forceful stand Tuesday was echoed in a rare statement of bipartisan support issued moments after her arrival: More than two dozen Republican senators, including Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the minority leader, wrote that her travel was “consistent with the United States’ One China policy to which we are committed.”
“She’s a high-ranking official in the US government. But it is not unusual,” said Senator Bob Menendez, Democrat from New Jersey and chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. “I was there three months ago with five other senators. We have a longstanding history of visiting Taiwan. And so we can’t let the Chinese say who can and cannot visit Taiwan.”
But the speaker’s arrival was greeted with scorn by Chinese officials, who accused Pelosi of undermining China’s sovereignty. And her visit comes as Xi has made it clearer than any of his predecessors that he sees unifying Taiwan with China to be a primary goal of his rule. Ahead of that all-important political meeting, Xi has been keen to project an image of strength at home and abroad, particularly on the question of Taiwan.
A statement issued by the Chinese Communist Party’s Taiwan Affairs Office said any attempt to seek independence by Taiwan would be “shattered by the powerful force of the Chinese people.”
Long a sore issue in an increasingly fraught US-China relationship, Taiwan — which has its own military and democratically elected government — has emerged as the front line in a geopolitical showdown over influence and power in Asia.
The United States has sent a steady stream of senior officials to show solidarity with Taiwan. Recently, Biden said he would act to defend Taiwan in the event of a conflict. It was not the first time he had done so, but White House officials have repeatedly walked back those statements, saying a longstanding policy of “strategic ambiguity” on the defense of Taiwan remains in place.