Taiwan visit caps Pelosi’s long history of confronting Beijing

WASHINGTON — More than 30 years ago, U.S. Representative Nancy Pelosi angered China’s government by showing up in Tiananmen Square and unfurling a banner honouring dissidents killed in the 1989 protests.

On Tuesday, as speaker of the House of Representatives, Pelosi disregarded China’s fiery warnings and landed in Taiwan to support its government and meet with human rights activists.

Pelosi’s trip to Taiwan capped her decades as a leading U.S. critic of the Beijing government, especially on rights issues, and underscores the long history of the U.S. Congress taking a harder line than the White House in dealings with Beijing.

Second in line for the presidency after Vice President Kamala Harris, Pelosi became the most senior U.S. politician to travel to Taiwan since then-Speaker Newt Gingrich in 1997. She led a delegation of six other House members.

In 1991, two years after China’s bloody crackdown on pro-democracy demonstrations, Pelosi and two other U.S. lawmakers unfurled a banner in Tiananmen reading: “To those who died for democracy in China.”

Police closed in, forcing them to leave the square.

In 2015, she took a group of House Democrats to Tibet, the first such visit since widespread unrest in 2008. Pelosi has regularly spoken out about human rights issues in Tibet and has met the Dalai Lama, whom Beijing reviles as a violent separatist.

China views visits by U.S. officials to Taiwan as sending an encouraging signal to the island’s pro-independence camp. Washington does not have official diplomatic ties with Taiwan but is legally bound to provide it with the means to defend itself.

Kharis Templeman, a Taiwan expert at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, said Pelosi, 82, would be looking to cement her legacy, while signalling support for Taiwan against pressure from Beijing.