Pelosi angers China, but Taiwan, not the US, can pay the highest price

() — When the Speaker of the US House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi, landed in Taiwan on Tuesday night, China had already prepared its response.

In quick succession, a series of government and political bodies issued statements condemning the visit and warning of its “serious impact” on US-China relations, while the Chinese military said it would immediately launch “air and sea exercises” and released a plan for drills around the island in the coming days.

Pelosi’s nearly 24-hour visit — the first by a senior US lawmaker in 25 years and part of a tour of Asia — was seen by Beijing as a “major political provocation” and a challenge to China’s sovereignty. The Communist Party of China claims Taiwan’s self-managed democracy as its own, despite never having controlled it.

Despite Beijing’s objections, Pelosi and a congressional delegation embarked on a series of high-level meetings at Taiwan’s legislature and Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen’s office, where the California Democrat said her delegation came to send an “unequivocal message” that “the United States stands with Taiwan”.

“We want Taiwan to always have freedom with security and we do not deviate from that,” Pelosi said, praising the courage of the Taiwanese people to defend democracy.

Pelosi’s defiance of China’s warnings not to visit the island may have aggravated turbulent US-China relations, but analysts say the party likely to end up feeling the brunt of pressure from Beijing is not the United States, but Taiwan.

Live fire drills

Beijing was quick to express its displeasure when the US Air Force plane carrying Pelosi’s delegation landed in Taiwan on Tuesday night, but its response so far has been more muted than some of the possibilities. that have been considered in China in recent days.

The Chinese military will hold exercises around Taiwan and launch a series of “targeted military operations to counter the situation,” according to statements released Tuesday by its Eastern Theater Command and Defense Ministry.

An official map indicating the location of some of these planned drills — initially scheduled for Thursday through Sunday — suggests they are closer to the island than previous exercises, and even encroaching on Taiwan’s territorial waters. Analysts say this indicates that this is an escalation from previous threats by Beijing against Taiwan.

The map shows that the drills will surround the island more completely than previous exercises, including military exercise zones and missile launch zones during a major crisis in the Taiwan Strait in the mid-1990s.

With these drills, China “has gone much further than before,” according to Carl Schuster, a former US Navy captain and former director of operations for the Joint Intelligence Center Pacific Command.

“The geopolitical signal being sent is that China can close Taiwan’s air and sea access whenever it wants,” he said.

Taiwan’s Defense Ministry on Wednesday called the plan a “sea and air blockade” that would “threaten the international sea lane, challenge international order, undermine the status quo across the strait, and endanger regional security.”

But the importance of the maneuvers will ultimately depend on what happens in the coming days, according to political scientist Chong Ja Ian of the National University of Singapore, who said that China’s image at home and abroad is at stake. .

“Beijing (doesn’t) want to escalate things in a way that it can’t control. At the same time, it can’t send a signal that seems too weak,” Chong said, noting that the latter would have internal ramifications for Chinese leader Xi Jinping and affect potentially to Beijing’s ability “to make other regional states submit to its line”.

“What that sweet spot looks like (for Beijing) nobody really knows,” he said.

national humiliation

But even as China launches its response, Pelosi’s landing in Taipei, and her high-profile meeting schedule on Wednesday, marked a significant setback for Beijing, which for days had tried to deter her trip with threats of retaliation and warnings about cross a “red line”. And disappointment at the failure of those threats was palpable in some circles in China.

However, Hu Xijin, a political pundit and former editor-in-chief of the state-run nationalist tabloid Global Times — which had warned of Chinese military retaliation against the United States in the run-up to Pelosi’s trip — tried to temper any discontent.

“Pelosi landed in Taiwan, which of course reflects that our deterrence power is not enough to stop her early offensive,” Hu wrote in a post on his verified Weibo account on Wednesday.

“But if they’re very frustrated about this, thinking we’ve ‘lost’ and found a new ‘national humiliation,’ that’s a bit of a stretch then. Some individuals may think that way, but we shouldn’t have that collective vulnerability,” he said.

Pelosi’s visit came at an especially sensitive time for China, as Xi, the country’s most powerful leader in decades, is preparing to rip up convention and seek a third term at the 20th Communist Party Congress this fall. And that raises the stakes if China fails to dissuade the speaker from her visit, analysts say.

“The Chinese tried to use saber rattling and war rhetoric to deter Pelosi’s trip, and they went overboard with their threats,” said Yun Sun, director of the China Program at the Stimson Center in Washington, pointing to the rhetoric in the China’s public sphere about possible actions like no-fly zones or even intercepting Pelosi’s plane.

“Now Pelosi has decided to make the trip and that leaves the Chinese hanging, because they really can’t deliver,” he said.
This reveals “quite a few problems” in China’s foreign policy, “that they think saber rattling is enough to get what they want, but the cost of that is their future credibility,” he said.

And while the situation is unlikely to affect Xi’s progress toward a third term, the visit, especially after his call with US President Joe Biden last week, in which the Chinese leader warned the US against that it should not “play with fire” on the Taiwan issue, was a “huge embarrassment” internally, Sun said.

Repercussions for Taiwan

But while Beijing’s anger has been directed at the US president, whom Chinese officials have accused of knowingly and maliciously provoking a “crisis,” analysts said Taiwan will bear the brunt of its fury.

The planned military exercises, aimed at “squeezing Taiwan”, will likely be followed by continued action in the Taiwan Strait, according to Sun.

“Pelosi’s visit will actually lead to a further escalation of Chinese military coercion on Taiwan for the foreseeable future. That punishment is the key to China’s response right now, because it cannot punish the United States,” he said.

Taiwan will also suffer an economic penalty for its actions, as China’s Taiwan Affairs Office announced on Wednesday the suspension of the import of certain citrus and seafood products from the island. Chinese customs, in a separate statement, attributed the suspensions to hygiene issues, but it is not the first time China has banned Taiwanese products amid escalating tensions.

The Chinese Ministry of Commerce also announced on Wednesday that it would immediately suspend its exports to Taiwan of natural sand, a key component for the production of semiconductor chips, a move that the Taiwan Bureau of Mines said would have a “limited” effect.

And in the face of China’s plans to hold military drills, Taiwan’s Port and Maritime Bureau also issued three notices on Wednesday, asking ships to use alternative routes to seven ports around the island.

Taiwan has also begun negotiating with its neighbors Japan and the Philippines to find alternative aviation routes that avoid Chinese assets.

Pelosi left the island on Wednesday, but leaves a defiant Taiwan under even greater pressure as China vents its fury.

Asked during a regular briefing in Beijing if the export suspension was meant to punish Taiwan for Pelosi’s visit, Chinese Deputy Foreign Minister Hua Chunying declined to comment on specific trade actions, but he said “one thing is certain here”.

“The United States and the Taiwanese separatist forces must bear the responsibility and pay the price for the mistakes they made,” he said.

‘s Beijing bureau contributed reporting.