Much of the concern in Beijing stems from Pelosi’s timing. The Chinese Communist Party will hold its 20th congress this fall, when Xi is expected to begin a controversial third term as president. Those who know Pelosi, however, privately suggest that among her thoughts would be the prospect of standing up to a global superpower in an attempt to erase her political legacy, with Democrats predicting that she would lose control of the House at the most significant November. in between. Back home, the trip was widely regarded as a success. The Democratic grand dame is deeply unpopular with Republicans, many of whom see her as a meddling coastal elite pushing a radical domestic agenda. But more than two dozen GOP representatives signed a letter in support of her visit. “We have huge disagreements on 98 or 99 percent of things, but on this one, I think her instincts are right,” Newt Gingrich said in a statement. He was the last such high-ranking US politician to visit Taiwan, 25 years ago. Congress has always taken a more aggressive line on Taiwan than the White House, whether Democrats or Republicans are in charge. And Pelosi has worked across party lines with the GOP to pass several major bills, including one to sanction Beijing for selling goods in America made with the forced labor of Muslim Uighurs. Her aggressive anti-Chinese stance in Congress has put her on a careful tightrope with her base in San Francisco, where she represents one of America’s largest Asian-American communities. A small group from the US-China People’s Friendship Association staged protests Tuesday downtown. Julie Tang, a retired judge who attended the rally, told me Pelosi’s trip was a “very, very bad idea.” A lifelong Democrat, like most Asian-Americans, Tang had contributed to Pelosi’s political campaigns, but is now reconsidering her party affiliation. The speaker, he said, “behaved like a Republican, like an imperialist.” Anti-Asian attacks are already on the rise in the U.S., and he worries that the community will feel any fallout from deteriorating relations between the two nuclear powers. David Lee, a political science lecturer in San Francisco, says that in the 35 years Pelosi has represented the city of 187,000 Chinese and Taiwanese Americans, sympathies among her voters have shifted decisively away from Taiwan independence. But for the most part, Chinese-Americans – most of whom are second, third and even fourth generation – pay little attention to what’s happening in the Pacific. In that case, Pelosi, who regularly garners more than 75 percent support in elections, doesn’t have to worry too much about the personal cost of her trip. “We love you, Nancy,” reads a sign that a Taiwanese-born dealer has stuck to an electronics store in Chinatown this week. “Two more years!”
