US Congressional Speaker Nancy Pelosi bids farewell to Taiwanese Foreign Minister Joseph Wu. /
China responds with military maneuvers and punishes agricultural imports
Chinese ships surrounded the island of Taiwan on Wednesday and their fighters flew over it threateningly, in what seemed a de facto blockade. That is what the speaker of the United States Congress, Nancy Pelosi, had achieved with her visit to the island that China claims as part of her territory.
“How has Taiwan’s security improved?” left-wing analysts on all television channels asked indignantly. Paradoxically, the leader of Congress, second in line to the White House after Vice President Kamala Harris, received high praise from the opposition. “Let me say four words that you may not have heard much of,” Missouri Republican Senator Roy Blunt intoned with satisfaction: “The speaker is right.”
There was, however, one criticism. On the first trip by a congressional spokeswoman to Taiwan since 1997, she was not accompanied by any Republican congressmen, only Democrats. Had he done so, “his message from her would have been much more forceful,” lamented the leader of the opposition in the Lower House, Kevin McCarthy. Upon receiving “on behalf of Congress” the Order of the Propitious Cloud with a Special Grand Cordon, the 82-year-old congresswoman, who already stood up to China in Tiananmen in 1991, made it “unequivocally” clear what the objective of her controversial visit was : “We will not abandon our commitment to Taiwan,” he declared.
Since the Nixon days, the “strategic ambiguity” agreement that accompanied the “One China” declaration has allowed the island to enjoy a pseudo-independence that has resulted in decades of economic development under democratic rule. Many fear that this is coming to an end. China promised in its day to seek “by peaceful means” the incorporation of the island that it took from Japan in 1683 and returned to it in 1895. The Asian giant briefly took control of Taiwan on behalf of the Allies after the surrender of Japan at the end of World War II, but the civil war that followed in mainland China with the victory of the Communist Party turned the island into a refuge for the resistance. Pelosi’s meetings in the scant 19 hours she has spent in Taiwan have included dissidents.
With the imperialist ambition of China, now the second superpower in the world, behind the United States, the unification of its historical territory tops the list of its rulers, as has happened to Vladimir Putin when evoking the greatness of Russia and the empire of the Soviet Union. China considers the presence of Pelosi, who has characterized her official visit and has arrived in a plane similar to Air Force One, as an unchecking of the US promise not to challenge its definition that Taiwan is part of “One China”. Neither the US nor the UN have recognized Taiwan’s independence, although Washington sells it weapons and has promised to defend it militarily from any Chinese aggression.
For some, Pelosi’s “provocation” is equivalent to Ukraine’s flirtations with NATO that justified the Russian invasion. For others, it is precisely the only thing that will contain the Chinese invasion, considered inevitable in many areas. “The question is not if it will happen, but when,” US government sources told NBC anchor Andrea Mitchell.
solid promise
“Madam President,” Pelosi told the Taiwanese head of state on Wednesday. “I think it’s important to remind some and inform others of how we got here: 43 years ago, with the Taiwan Relations Act, the US made a strong promise to always stand by Taipei,” she intoned.
The positions of the congressmen who accompanied him gave an idea of the firmness of his resolution: the president of the Foreign Affairs Committee, the Veterans Committee, the vice president of the Ways and Means Committee, which has jurisdiction over discretionary budget spending , and members of the Intelligence Committee, the Armed Services Committee and even a diplomat from the State Department.
The White House did not approve of the trip, but has been forced to defend it. “China cannot dictate to the US Executive where they can or cannot travel,” defended the spokesman for the White House National Security Council, John Kirby.
President Joe Biden would have repeated this to his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, who warned him that he was “playing with fire” during their telephone conversation last Thursday. After seeing the military deployment of the Chinese maneuvers when Pelosi and his delegation left, the White House said it was not surprised. “It’s exactly what we expected to happen,” Kirby replied, almost satisfied.
The Chinese government summoned the US ambassador to Beijing, Nicholas Burns, on Tuesday night to officially protest the visit that Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi described as “a complete farce that violates the sovereignty” of the country. “Whoever offends China will be punished,” he threatened.
Its spokesman, Hua Chunying, assured that the maneuvers carried out by the Chinese armed forces do not imply any alteration of trade or navigation traffic in the Taiwan Strait. “I think they should pay more attention to how American warships and fighters are approaching China’s doorstep in a defiant show of force,” he countered.
Taiwan has had to respond to the deployment of 27 Chinese planes by taking off its own fighters, claiming that 22 of them crossed the border line separating its airspace from China. If that was the threat, the punishment has materialized with the suspension of various agricultural imports. The Government of Taipei did not think it was a bad price to pay for the accolade achieved: “Your presence here serves to reinforce the public’s confidence in the strength of our democracy as a foundation for our alliance with the United States,” the president told her gratefully. Tsai Ing-Wen.