Pelosi received a rapturous welcome in Taipei and was applauded with strong bipartisan support in Washington, despite the reservations of the Biden administration. But her trip has angered Beijing and Chinese nationalists and will complicate already strained ties even after she leaves. Already, China is preparing new shows of force in the Taiwan Strait to make clear that its claims are non-negotiable on the island it views as a renegade province. And, as the US moves forward with demonstrations of support for Taiwan, arms sales and diplomatic lobbying, escalating tensions have raised the risks of military conflict, whether intended or not. And the trip could further complicate Washington’s already complicated relationship with Beijing, as the two sides face differences over trade, the war in Ukraine, human rights and more. Wary of China’s reaction, the Biden administration discouraged but did not prevent Pelosi from visiting Taiwan. He took pains to emphasize in Beijing that the House speaker is not a member of the executive branch and her visit represents no change in the US’s “one China” policy. That was small comfort for Beijing. Pelosi, the second in line for the US presidency, was no ordinary visitor and was received almost as a head of state. Taiwan’s skyline lit up with a message of welcome and he met with the biggest names on the island, including its president, senior lawmakers and prominent rights activists. Chinese officials were outraged. “What Pelosi did is definitely not defending and preserving democracy, but challenging and violating China’s sovereignty and territorial integrity,” Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said after her departure. “Pelosi’s dangerous challenge is purely for personal political capital, which is an absolutely ugly political farce,” Hua said. “China-US relations and regional peace and stability are suffering.” The timing of the visit may have heightened tensions. It came ahead of this year’s Chinese Communist Party Congress in which President Xi Jinping will seek to further consolidate his power by using a hard line on Taiwan to soften domestic criticism over COVID-19, the economy and other issues. US Ambassador Nicholas Burns, who was summoned to the State Department to hear China’s complaints, insisted the visit was nothing more than routine. “The United States will not escalate and is prepared to work with China to prevent escalation altogether,” Burns said, according to the State Department. The White House also said Pelosi’s visit “changes nothing” about the US’s stance toward China and Taiwan. Spokeswoman Karine Jean-Pierre said the US expected a tough response from China, even as she called it unwarranted. “We will monitor and manage what Beijing chooses to do,” he added. Worried about the possibility of a new geostrategic conflict at the same time as the West sides with Ukraine in its resistance to Russian invasion, the US has rallied allies to its side. The foreign ministers of the Group of 7 industrialized nations issued a statement on Wednesday essentially telling China — the initials of its official name, the People’s Republic of China — to calm down. “It is normal and routine for lawmakers from our countries to travel internationally,” the G-7 ministers said. “The DPRK’s escalating response risks increasing tensions and destabilizing the region. We call on the DPRK not to unilaterally change the status quo by force in the region and resolve cross-strait disputes through peaceful means.” However, this status quo – long defined as “strategic ambiguity” for the US and tacit but determined Chinese opposition to any vestige of Taiwan independence – appears no longer tolerable for either side. “It is becoming increasingly difficult to agree on Taiwan for both Beijing and Washington,” said Jean-Pierre Cabestan, professor emeritus at Hong Kong Baptist University. In Taipei and the US Congress, moves are underway to clarify the ambiguity that has defined US relations with Taiwan since the 1970s. The Senate Foreign Relations Committee will soon consider a bill that would strengthen relations, require the executive branch to do more to bring Taiwan into the international system and take more decisive action to help the island defend itself. Writing in the New York Times, committee chairman Robert Menendez, DN.J., criticized China’s response to Pelosi’s visit. “The effect of Beijing’s outrage should be to strengthen resolve in Taipei, in Washington and across the region,” he said. “There are many strategies to continue to resist Chinese aggression. There is clear bipartisan agreement in Congress on the importance of acting now to provide the people of Taiwan with the kind of support they desperately need.” But China appears to be moving forward with steps that could prove incremental, including live-fire military exercises planned for this week and a steady increase in fighter jet flights in and near Taiwan’s self-declared air defense zone. “They will test the Taiwanese and the Americans,” said Cabestan, the Hong Kong professor. He said actions by the US military in the region, including a naval force led by the aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan, would be critical. China had escalated the potential standoff weeks ago by declaring that the Taiwan Strait that separates the island from the mainland is not international waters. The US rejected this and responded by sending more ships through it. Cabestan said this shows that “something had to be done on the US side to draw red lines to prevent the Chinese from going too far.” Meanwhile, Taiwan is on edge, air raid shelters have been prepared and the government is ramping up training for new recruits serving their four-month military service — generally considered inadequate — along with annual two-week refresher courses for reservists. “The Chinese believe that if they don’t act, the United States will continue to cut the salami to take incremental steps in support of Taiwan independence,” said Bonnie Glaser, a China specialist in the Asia Program at the German Marshall Fund. . He said US domestic support for Taiwan gives China added incentive to take a strong stance: “China feels under pressure to do more to signal that this is an issue on which China cannot compromise.” Despite immediate concerns about escalation and possible miscalculation, there are others who do not believe the damage to US-China ties will be more long-lasting than that caused by other issues unrelated to Taiwan. China “will make a huge fuss and there will be military exercises and there will be embargoes on imports of goods from Taiwan. And after the noise dies down, you’ll see a gradual easing,” said June Teufel Dreyer, a China policy expert at the University of Miami. “It’s never going back to absolutely normal, what’s normal, but it’s definitely going to go away,” he said.
AP writers Zeke Miller in Washington, Joe McDonald in Beijing and David Rising in Phnom Penh, Cambodia contributed to this report.
