Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her congressional delegation flew out of Taipei this morning without incident, following various meetings and her receipt of a prestigious civilian award from Taiwan’s president. Her closing remarks seemed to be intended for an audience in Beijing as much as the people of Taiwan or the United States. She declared that her delegation was sending an “unequivocal message: America stands with Taiwan.” But she and the Taiwanese president were both careful to mention that they are committed to the status quo in which “the United States recognizes Beijing as the sole legitimate government of China.” It doesn’t sound as if her assurances made Beijing feel placated. A Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson called Pelosi’s visit a “political farce.” (NBC News)
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi departed Taiwan on Wednesday after a whirlwind visit that captured global attention and further strained relations between the United States and China.
Before boarding a plane to leave the island at around 6 a.m. ET, Pelosi vowed solidarity with the self-ruling democracy that Beijing claims as its territory while China launched military drills, summoned the U.S. ambassador and halted some imports from Taiwan in a display of angry protest at her visit.
“Our delegation came here to send an unequivocal message: America stands with Taiwan,” Pelosi said at a news conference in Taipei after meeting with Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen.
John already provided a roundup of China’s various outraged responses to the trip last night, but they’ve fleshed out a few more details, some of which seem to be conflicting. They’ve already scheduled at least four days of military exercises, including live-fire weapons launches that are anticipated to penetrate Taiwan’s airspace and territorial waters. (Which the Chinese claim to not recognize.)
One analyst quoted by the AP described such live-fire drills into Taiwan’s airspace as something that could be viewed as “an act of war.” But the United States really doesn’t have any grounds to respond to the drills as such. That is once again because of our intentionally vague One China policy. By saying that we recognize Beijing as the “sole legitimate government of China,” we pretty much admit that Taiwan doesn’t actually have any territorial waters or restricted airspace. So China is really just firing into their own airspace and coastal waters.
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Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen took a somewhat more militaristic tone.
“Facing deliberately heightened military threats, Taiwan will not back down,” Tsai said. “We will firmly uphold our nation’s sovereignty and continue to hold the line of defense for democracy.”
Shortly after Pelosi landed, China announced live-fire drills that would start Tuesday night and a four-day exercise beginning Thursday in waters on all sides of the island.
China’s air force also flew a relatively large contingent of 21 war planes, including fighter jets, toward Taiwan.
It’s probably unfortunate that Taiwan’s current president has been taking these sorts of aggressive tones toward China. After all, if Xi Jinping feels as if he’s losing face over this and is goaded into an attack sooner than he might otherwise, America will wind up being on the hook for helping Taiwan defend itself. And if that’s the case, we could wind up in a second proxy war with another nuclear power at a time when we already have enough on our plate.
The other point of concern was China’s declaration that they would “not allow” any more visits of this type going forward. But how would they stop such a visit from taking place? If they’re going to shut down Taiwan’s airspace and ocean ports, that might entail taking down foreign planes or ships. And then we’re back to another world war three scenario. Hopefully things will calm down a bit now that the trip has concluded and we can get back to the fifty other crises we’re dealing with.
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