Tsai administration will find it difficult to digest what its ‘distinguished guest’ has served up

Be it the arrangement of two planes heading to Taiwan from Malaysia at almost the same time on Tuesday night, which took big loops to shun Chinese mainland airspace, or the escort provided by an aircraft carrier strike group along the route, it demonstrates that the United States is aware how provocative House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to the Chinese island was.

Although she said in her statement upon her arrival in Taipei that her visit “in no way contradicts” the three joint communiques between the United States and China, it only exposed her awareness that it does. She is like the thief who steals a bell and thinks she can mute the telltale ringing announcing her crime by covering her own ears.

When she alleged that “the world faces a choice between autocracy and democracy” in her statement on the visit, she was taking defending “democracy” as a pretense to interfere in China’s internal affairs.

That’s an old trick of US politicians, something they have staged again and again to try and disguise their troublemaking.

And her expression of support for Taiwan’s “vibrant democracy” was a condescending citation awarded the Tsai Ing-wen administration for it dutifully playing the role Washington has assigned to it while playing the Taiwan card in its efforts to contain China.

What makes it a total farce is that Tsai, whose bowand-scrape reception and treatment of the “distinguished guests” from the US has galled many on the island, conferred a medal on Pelosi, saying that it “represents the Taiwan people’s gratitude to her”.

What it really represents is their joint efforts to hijack the island’s future for personal gains.

That the Tsai administration has readily accepted the “proposal” that Taiwan should join the US’ “Indo-Pacific strategy” targeting China means the island will then be integrated deeper into the complicated framework the US is constructing to contain China.

However, no matter what provocation the US has come up with on the Taiwan question, it has always been repaid by the Chinese mainland’s progress in strengthening its military capabilities to guarantee reunification by force as a last resort. So is it this time.

The intensive military drills the People’s Liberation Army organizes around the island, which defy the 12-sea-mile “territorial sea border” the island administration claims, and the so-called middle line of the Straits, mark a key step for the mainland to bolster its military deterrence to the secessionists on the island. Not to mention the other countermeasures the mainland has vowed to take to make the trip a memorable one for both the hosts and the guests.

It will take a long time for the Tsai administration to digest what Pelosi has served up in just a few hours.