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Why Pelosi’s Taiwan Visit Is Raising U.S.-China Tensions

Beijing has vigorously protested Ms. Pelosi’s trip, warning of unspecified consequences for the United States.

By Jane Perlez

Follow our live coverage of Nancy Pelosi’s Taiwan visit.

Taiwan, an island of 23 million people 80 miles off the coast of China, has long been a point of tension between Washington and Beijing. Now those tensions are at a new high, with Speaker Nancy Pelosi having held a series of high-profile meetings there on Wednesday. Ms. Pelosi is the most prominent American official to visit the island since 1997, when her predecessor Newt Gingrich went there .

China claims Taiwan, a self-governing island democracy, as its territory, and has vowed to take it back, by force if necessary. In a call with President Biden on Thursday, China’s leader, Xi Jinping, sharply warned the United States against intervening in the dispute. Beijing has vigorously protested Ms. Pelosi’s trip, warning of unspecified consequences for the United States.

Its warnings have reverberated through the Pentagon and the Indo-Pacific Command in Hawaii, where American military officials have been tasked with protecting Ms. Pelosi, as well as assessing what China could do militarily in response to her trip. Taiwan, the world’s leading producer of semiconductors, is also vulnerable to stepped-up economic pressure from Beijing.

Here is a look at the issues around Ms. Pelosi’s visit.

China’s leader has long set his sights on Taiwan.

Mr. Xi, China’s authoritarian leader, has made it clearer than any of his predecessors that he sees unifying Taiwan with China as a primary goal of his rule.

He is expected to be confirmed to an unprecedented third term as leader at a Communist Party congress in the fall. Ahead of that all-important political meeting, Mr. Xi will be keen to project an image of strength at home and abroad, particularly on the question of Taiwan.

In June, Mr. Xi dispatched his defense minister, Gen. Wei Fenghe, to an international conference in Singapore, where Mr. Wei warned that China would not hesitate to fight for Taiwan.

“If anyone dares to split off Taiwan, we will not hesitate to fight, will not flinch from the cost and will fight to the very end,” General Wei told his audience.

The question of when Mr. Xi might try to absorb Taiwan is extensively debated among military and civilian experts on China, but it is not expected to be imminent.

“China does want Taiwan ‘back’ badly, but that does not mean it wants an early bloody war that would destroy China’s economic miracle,” William H. Overholt, a senior research fellow at Harvard’s Kennedy School, wrote in the current issue of Global Asia .

In a fiery speech marking the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Chinese Communist Party last year, Mr. Xi stressed the need for the mainland’s unification with Taiwan, which he called “a historic mission and an unshakable commitment of the Communist Party of China.”

Any country that dared to stand in the way would face a “great wall of steel” forged by China’s 1.4 billion people, he said.

Taiwan is the single biggest flash point in U.S.-China relations.

China’s incursions into airspace and waters near Taiwan have become more aggressive in the past several years, heightening the risk of conflict.

In June, Beijing upped the stakes when the foreign ministry declared that China had jurisdiction over the Taiwan Strait and that it could not be considered an international waterway.

And in the past year, Chinese military planes have increasingly probed the airspace near Taiwan, prompting Taiwan to scramble fighter jets.

Some American analysts have made it clear that China’s military capabilities have grown to the point that an American victory in defense of Taiwan is no longer guaranteed.

Oriana Skylar Mastro, a fellow at Stanford University’s Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, recently outlined the array of weaponry China has amassed for a fight over Taiwan in a commentary published in The New York Times .

China now has the world’s largest navy, and the United States could throw far fewer ships into a Taiwan conflict, she said. “China’s missile force is also thought to be capable of targeting ships at sea to neutralize the main U.S. tool of power projection, aircraft carriers,” she said.

Earlier this week, the Seventh Fleet ordered the aircraft carrier Ronald Reagan and its strike group to sail from Singapore north toward the South China Sea, and in the direction of Taiwan. A Navy spokesperson declined to say whether the carrier would be sailing in the vicinity of Taiwan or sailing through the Taiwan Strait.

Taiwan is a political minefield for Washington.

Ms. Pelosi’s trip put President Biden in an awkward position. She and her staff insisted that the speaker, as the leader of a separate but coequal branch of American government, had the right to go anywhere she desired.

For his part, Mr. Biden did not want to be seen as dictating where the speaker could travel. Before her departure, he signaled that he questioned the wisdom of the trip.

“I think that the military thinks it’s not a good idea right now,” Mr. Biden said.

In an intentionally ambiguous diplomatic arrangement adopted when Washington recognized Communist-ruled China in 1979, the United States maintains a “one China” policy that acknowledges, but does not endorse, the Chinese position that Taiwan is part of China.

Mr. Biden has said three times, most recently in May , that the United States would deploy force to help Taiwan against a Chinese invasion. On each occasion, the White House walked back his statements, saying that the policy of “strategic ambiguity” remained, under which Washington remains vague about how forcefully the United States would come to Taiwan’s aid.

The United States maintains robust diplomatic relations with China, with a big embassy in Beijing and four consulates around the country. But relations are at a low over military, economic and ideological competition between the two countries.

The current ambassador to Beijing, R. Nicholas Burns, is one of America’s most experienced diplomats. In Taiwan, the United States keeps a representative office, the American Institute in Taiwan, headed by a low-profile official from the State Department. At the same time, Washington supplies Taiwan with billions of dollars in military aid and weapons.

Ms. Pelosi has a history of poking China in the eye.

The speaker is a longstanding critic of China. In Beijing, she is viewed as hostile.

As a two-term congresswoman from California, Ms. Pelosi visited Beijing in 1991, two years after Chinese troops opened fire on student protesters around Tiananmen Square, killing hundreds if not thousands.

Accompanied to the square by several congressional colleagues and a small group of reporters, Ms. Pelosi unfurled a banner commemorating the dead students. The banner read: “To Those Who Died for Democracy in China.”

Mike Chinoy, then a correspondent for CNN, recalled in an article this week how Ms. Pelosi then left the square in a taxi. Police arrested the reporters, detaining them for a couple of hours, he wrote.

Ms. Pelosi is a strong supporter of the Dalai Lama and the rights of Tibetans. In 2015, with official permission from the Chinese government, Ms. Pelosi visited Lhasa, the capital of Tibet, on a tightly controlled trip that is usually off limits to foreign officials and journalists.

The speaker’s plans for a Taiwan trip attracted some unlikely backers. Senior officials in the Trump administration, including the former secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, and the former secretary of defense, Mark Esper, said they would like to join her. Mr. Pompeo tweeted that he was banned in China, but would be happy to accompany Ms. Pelosi to Taiwan.

Jane Perlez was the Beijing bureau chief. She has served as bureau chief in Kenya, Poland, Austria, Indonesia and Pakistan, and was a member of the team that won the 2009 Pulitzer Prize for reporting in Pakistan and Afghanistan. More about Jane Perlez

Pelosi meets with Taiwan’s president in historic visit, escalating tensions with China

WASHINGTON ⁠— House Speaker Nancy Pelosi , who is leading an official congressional delegation to Asia this week, made an unannounced visit to Taiwan late on Tuesday, a move that escalated tensions between Beijing and Washington.

The California Democrat met with Taiwan’s president, Tsai Ing-wen, who presented Pelosi with the Order of Propitious Clouds with Special Grand Cordon, a civilian order of the highest rank.

“Speaker Pelosi is truly one of Taiwan’s most devoted friends,” Tsai said at a ceremony that took place Wednesday after Pelosi addressed Taiwan’s parliament. “We are truly grateful to you for making this visit to Taiwan to showcase the U.S. Congress’s staunch support for Taiwan.”

Pelosi is the highest-ranking U.S. official to visit Taiwan since then-House Speaker Newt Gingrich traveled there in 1997. She visited the island in 1999 but she was not in leadership then. Lawmakers from both sides of the aisle ( and Gingrich ) had been urging Pelosi to make the trip despite warnings from China of "serious consequences."

Pelosi described Taiwan as a “flourishing democracy” whose story is “an inspiration to all freedom-loving people in the United States and around the world.”

"Now more than ever, America’s solidarity with Taiwan is crucial, and that is the message we are bringing here today,” she said in the ceremony with Tsai. “Today the world faces a choice between democracy and autocracy. America’s determination to preserve democracy here in Taiwan and around the world remains ironclad, and we are grateful to the partnership of the people of Taiwan in this mission.”

China immediately condemned Pelosi’s visit Tuesday, vowing that “those who play with fire will perish by it,” and announced new military exercises surrounding Taiwan later this week including live-fire drills. The visit represents a “serious violation” that “seriously infringes upon China’s sovereignty and territorial integrity,” the Chinese Foreign Ministry said in a statement Tuesday after her arrival in Taipei.

“These moves, like playing with fire, are extremely dangerous. Those who play with fire will perish by it,” it said. The Global Times, a state-controlled newspaper, reported that the Chinese military would “conduct important military exercises and training activities including live-fire drills in six regions surrounding the Taiwan island from Thursday to Sunday.”

Beijing also said it had lodged a “strong protest” with the United States.

The military-operated blue-and-white government plane, emblazoned with "United States of America," touched down about 10:45 p.m. local time in the capital city of Taipei. Pelosi and members of her delegation emerged from the plane and walked down its stairs to the tarmac, where they were greeted by Taiwanese officials.

“Our Congressional delegation’s visit to Taiwan honors America’s unwavering commitment to supporting Taiwan’s vibrant Democracy," Pelosi and members of her delegation said in a joint statement after touching down.

"Our discussions with Taiwan leadership will focus on reaffirming our support for our partner and on promoting our shared interests, including advancing a free and open Indo-Pacific region," the statement continued. "America’s solidarity with the 23 million people of Taiwan is more important today than ever, as the world faces a choice between autocracy and democracy."

Tsai, during remarks alongside Pelosi on Wednesday, cited the importance of security in the Indo-Pacific region given the war in Ukraine.

“Russia’s invasion of Ukraine earlier this year has made security over the Taiwan Strait another focus of worldwide attention," she said. "Aggressions against democratic Taiwan would have a tremendous impact on the security of the entire Indo-Pacific.”

Pelosi and the other lawmakers made clear that their visit was one of many trips by congressional delegations to Taiwan and "in no way contradicts" long-standing U.S. policy, which is guided by the Taiwan Relations Act of 1979, three U.S.-China Joint Communiques and the Six Assurances.

"The United States continues to oppose unilateral efforts to change the status quo," the lawmakers said.

Earlier this week, the lawmakers made stops in Malaysia and Singapore. After Taiwan, the delegation will travel to South Korea and Japan.

For days, Pelosi’s office had declined to confirm any plans for international travel, citing security protocols. The White House also had not confirmed the trip.

The five House Democratic lawmakers traveling with Pelosi are Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Gregory Meeks, D-N.Y.; Veterans Affairs Committee Chairman Mark Takano, D-Calif., who led his own delegation to Taiwan last year; Rep. Suzan DelBene, D-Wash., a leading voice on trade issues; Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi, D-Ill., a member of the Intelligence Committee; and Rep. Andy Kim, D-N.J., a former national security official in the Obama administration.

Republicans, including Texas Rep. Michael McCaul, had been asked to join the trip but all declined the invitation by Pelosi. Still, Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., and more than two dozen of his Senate GOP colleagues issued a joint statement of support for Pelosi.

“We support Speaker of the House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi’s trip to Taiwan. For decades, members of the United States Congress, including previous Speakers of the House, have travelled to Taiwan," the Republicans said Tuesday. "This travel is consistent with the United States’ One China policy to which we are committed."

The visit comes amid growing concern in Washington as U.S.- China  relations strain over the future of the self-ruling democracy that Beijing claims as its territory.

The trip came up during a call between President Joe Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping last week. Biden had said last month that U.S. military officials thought it was “not a good idea” for Pelosi to visit Taiwan, but the White House backed off those warnings as her trip approached.

On Monday, National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said Pelosi's potential visit was "consistent with long-standing U.S. policy" and urged China not to turn into "some sort of crisis or use it as a pretext to increase aggressive military activity in or around the Taiwan Strait."

During an interview with ABC’s “Good Morning America” on Tuesday, national security adviser Jake Sullivan said that “if China chooses to try to turn a potential visit by the speaker into a crisis or tries to use it as a pretext to take aggressive action around Taiwan, that’s on them.”

“The United States is not looking for escalation but, of course, we will reserve the right to ensure that we are defending our interests and we will stay vigilant to whatever China chooses to do in the coming hours and days,” he added.

Zoë Richards reported from New York, Scott Wong reported from Washington, D.C., and Max Burman reported from London.

Zoë Richards is the evening politics reporter for NBC News.

Scott Wong is a senior congressional reporter for NBC News.

Max Burman is deputy editor in the London bureau of NBC News Digital.

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The drama over Nancy Pelosi’s Taiwan travel plans, briefly explained

US policy toward Taiwan is all about “strategic ambiguity.” That means every trip and remark has to be just right.

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How reckless can a trip to Taiwan be?

For House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, it depends on whom you ask. Even before Pelosi, second in line to the US presidency, landed on the democratic island on Tuesday, her potential travel plans had already caused a domestic political debate and a foreign policy fracas .

Everyone from President Joe Biden to Trump administration alumni to the Kremlin has been weighing in on Pelosi’s itinerary. China, antagonized by a senior American representative planning to travel to the neighboring island that Beijing claims as its own, began issuing warnings immediately. In a show of force on Thursday, China conducted military activities, firing missiles and other live-fire trainings, in waters close to Taiwan. The Chinese government said the exercises, which experts say appear to encircle Taiwan and simulate a Chinese invasion of the island, will last four days .

Pelosi and a delegation of five House Democrats landed in Taiwan two days earlier, and on Wednesday met with President Tsai Ing-wen, and other leaders and lawmakers. “Our congressional delegation’s visit should be seen as an unequivocal statement that America stands with Taiwan, our democratic partner, as it defends itself and its freedom,” Pelosi wrote in a Washington Post op-ed .

The now-concluded visit, the first from a sitting speaker of the House in 25 years, brings new attention to the balancing act of how the US handles the status of Taiwan. It’s a complex policy filled with diplomatic nuance, in an attempt to smooth relations with China while also supporting Taiwan against Chinese aggression. All of this has been accentuated by China’s rapid rise economically and militarily, which has focused US energy on countering its influence worldwide .

That’s created an atmosphere of dangerous competition between the two nuclear-armed countries, where even a trip abroad has strategic implications.

The travel plans — and everyone’s responses to them

Pelosi had canceled a Taiwan journey for April when she tested positive for Covid-19, and she rescheduled it for August, a move first reported by the Financial Times .

That news prompted immediate ire from Beijing, and concerns among some in Washington, too.

President Joe Biden said in late July of Pelosi going, “the military thinks it’s not a good idea right now.” (Some Biden officials have said that China may go as far as to ground her travel by implementing a no-fly zone over Taiwan, possibly bringing the US and China into direct conflict.)

In a press conference a day later, Pelosi retorted “it’s important for us to show support for Taiwan.” She said she never discusses international travel plans “because it is a security issue,” but added she hadn’t heard anything directly from the administration about the plane issue. A number of Republican lawmakers rallied behind Pelosi , and since then, the White House publicly affirmed its support for a visit as well.

“We shouldn’t be as a country — we shouldn’t be intimidated by [China’s] rhetoric or those potential actions. This is an important trip for the speaker to be on and we’re going to do whatever we can to support her,” National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby told CNN’s Brianna Keilar on Monday .

Congress members frequently travel abroad to hot spots; House Armed Services Committee Chair Adam Smith (D-WA) led a group of lawmakers to Ukraine just in the last week, for example. Republican Rep. Newt Gingrich visited Taiwan when he was speaker in 1997, the last time someone second in line to the US presidency visited the island. But in addition to Pelosi being a leading member of the same party as Biden, the relationship with China has deteriorated since the ’90s . In response to Pelosi’s travel, China has boldly threatened “ strong measures ” against Taiwan and conveyed severe concerns to the White House about the trip. Tuesday, ahead of Pelosi’s arrival, Chinese warplanes flew along the line dividing the Taiwan Strait .

Much of the disquiet in Washington and Beijing over the trip may have to do with timing. The Chinese Communist Party this fall will hold its 20th congress, a major gathering that occurs every five years and in which Xi Jinping is expected to take on an unprecedented third term as president. At the confab, he will also likely discuss Taiwan at a time when experts see parallels between Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the power that China wants to assert over Taiwan. (Many are wondering what lessons China is taking from Vladimir Putin’s brutal adventurism and the West’s response to it.) Biden and Xi held a two-hour phone call last week to ease US-China relations.

“There is bad timing and worse timing, and this is certainly worse timing,” Lev Nachman, a researcher at the Harvard Fairbank Center for China Studies, told me last week. “The worry is that Pelosi going could be a straw that breaks the camel’s back.”

China regularly aggravates Taiwan with military drills , but the live-fire exercises around Taiwan this week are particularly close to the island’s coastline — the closest in a quarter century. But there could also be something altogether more provocative. “Pretty much anytime there’s a congressional delegation, anytime there’s a weapons sale that goes through to Taiwan, China does a whole song and dance,” Nachman said. “When China says they’re going to do something to retaliate, the worry is: Is that going to be like the same, you know, shtick they always give us? Or is there going to be something more?”

When Xi wakes up each morning, what’s the first challege he thinks about? I’d confidently bet Taiwan is neither in his Top 5 nor even his Top 10. Pelosi’s visit, however, if it happens, will catapult Taiwan to very near the top, or number one. Is it worthwhile? — Derek J. Grossman (@DerekJGrossman) July 24, 2022

Pelosi and five other House Democrats began the Asia trip earlier this week; in addition to Monday’s stop in Singapore and Tuesday’s in Malaysia, the group has announced it will visit South Korea and Japan.

Now all eyes are on what happens between China, Taiwan, and the US in the next few days during these live-fire drills — and down the road.

A nuanced China policy, and an unscripted Biden

The ambiguity around US-Taiwan relations is head-spinning for those not fully proficient in the “One China” policy, which has been in effect since the 1970s. Officially, the US acknowledges China’s claim over Taiwan but does not endorse that claim. The US officially says it doesn’t support Taiwan’s independence, but ensuring Taiwan’s autonomy is central to US actions in Asia. And Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan may upset the delicate equilibrium.

There are no formal diplomatic ties between the US and Taiwan but plenty of unofficial ties; relations are dictated by a series of diplomatic protocols and laws — the Taiwan Relations Act (passed by Congress in 1979), the three joint communiques (between the US and China in the ’70s and ’80s), and the six assurances (between the US and Taiwan). That is how the US can, among other things, sell weapons to Taiwan for its self-defense against China while preserving relations with China.

The policy of strategic ambiguity — whether or not the US would back Taiwan in a Chinese attack — endures, as National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan emphasized in July. But Biden has suggested otherwise.

As president, Biden has sparked controversy by describing “the commitment we made” to defend Taiwan if China were to attack it, although US policy holds out no such commitment. Biden’s persistent unscripted comments on this have led many to speculate that he’s changing policy. Even a tiny wording change is a big deal. When the US State Department changes a sentence on its website, China issues a formal condemnation. So the president contradicting his own government several times is either undermining himself or poking China. After each episode, the White House has downplayed the comments as, in essence, Biden being Biden.

Biden’s remarks suggest, as reporter David Sanger of the New York Times has posited , that hawkish personnel in the Biden administration are “winning the day” and “the second thing that it tells you about this administration is that they may be rethinking the utility of strategic ambiguity.”

Jessica Drun, a Taiwan expert at the Atlantic Council, says that China is able to get ahead of the narrative because its approach to Taiwan is explicit and declaratory — that Taiwan is theirs and the US is being militaristic by arming it. “Ours is wrapped in nuances, and some words hold different meanings from a diplomatic perspective,” she told me last week. “There are things that need to be caveated every time, and so it’s harder for us to articulate clearly, at least to a public audience, what our stances are. That’s why there’s so much misunderstanding on what US policy toward Taiwan is, sometimes even from elements within our own government.”

When Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin has spoken of China policy, like at the Shangri-La Dialogue in June, he basically read the Taiwan Relations Act aloud. He was careful to stay on script. Secretary of State Tony Blinken added some more details on the US approach to Taiwan in a major speech about Asia in May. He pointed out that policy has been “consistent across decades and administrations” and said, “While our policy has not changed, what has changed is Beijing’s growing coercion.”

The caution from Biden’s team contrasts with the more bombastic approach that the Donald Trump administration took, with trade wars, bitter words, and approving more than $18 billion of arms sales to Taiwan. (Biden’s approved just over $1 billion so far.)

Trump, as president-elect, broke US policy by holding a phone call with Taiwan’s President Tsai Ing-wen. As secretary of state, Mike Pompeo delivered a speech that was interpreted as threatening regime change in China. And since leaving government, Pompeo and former Defense Secretary Mark Esper have both visited Taiwan. With Biden’s approval ratings low and another presidential election in just two years, many in the Chinese government view a much more anti-China Republican administration as imminent — all while members of both parties in the US hollow out the “One China” policy.

Rhetoric aside, Trump’s and Biden’s approach to China and Taiwan have some similarities. Biden, it might be said, is implementing a hawkish China strategy that former Deputy National Security Adviser Matt Pottinger pushed for in the Trump White House. Biden’s Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo even hosted Pottinger to discuss and coordinate industrial policy in March.

In Washington, there is a bipartisan consensus on Taiwan. “Republicans are louder on Taiwan than Democrats,” said Nachman, but he explains, “Every single Taiwan bill that has ever gone through Congress, both at the House and Senate levels, has been bipartisan and unanimously supported by both Democrats and Republicans.”

Bonnie Glaser, who directs the Asia Program at the German Marshall Fund think tank in Washington, argues that the US and the world needs clarity from the Biden administration about how it sees the US-Taiwan relationship, so that the president’s unscripted remarks don’t inadvertently come to define policy. Without doing so, and with Pelosi’s visit, it risks adding new dangers to what she describes as toxic US-China relations.

“Try to convince the Chinese that it isn’t part of a grand plan to change our policy, and it’s very difficult to do so,” she told me last week. “They ascribe more coherence to our policy than they should.”

Correction, 12:30 pm, July 25: A previous version of this story that referred to air raid drills in Taiwan misstated the reason for them. Drills have occurred for several decades; Pelosi’s potential travel plans to the island add tension to the routine drills.

Update, 10:30 am, August 4: This piece has been updated to include information about the Chinese military activities.

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Pelosi Visiting Taiwan Is the Kind of Virtue Signaling the U.S-China Relationship Can Do Without

S peaker Nancy Pelosi’s tour in Asia this week would look like an ordinary congressional overseas trip during the dog days of summer—but for the purported intention to make a stop in Taiwan . The possibility is adding tension to the often fraught U.S.-China relationship.

The question is why Pelosi believes such a visit is necessary, particularly at a time when Chinese President Xi Jinping has an incentive to elevate his hawkish bona-fides as he seeks to attain a norm-breaking third term. The easiest answer is the most likely: there is no reason for the trip, other than that Pelosi wants to show her commitment to Taiwan.

As one might expect, Chinese officials have responded angrily to the notion of the most senior U.S. lawmaker grasping hands with Taiwanese officials. During his hours-long call with President Biden on July 28, Xi warned the U.S. to avoid “playing with fire” on the Taiwan issue, a phrase he used during a virtual summit with Biden last November. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian had also earlier warned of “forceful responses” if Pelosi lands on Taiwanese soil. For Beijing, the status of Taiwan is an absolute red-line, and a key plank of Xi’s national rejuvenation campaign is its eventual reincorporation into the mainland.

Read More: Why the U.S. Retreat from Afghanistan Alarms Allies Like Taiwan

To its credit, the Biden administration appears to grasp just how controversial Pelosi’s trip would be in the eyes of Chinese officials. President Biden stated flatly that the “military thinks it’s not a good idea right now,” and the Pentagon is so concerned about possible Chinese military reprisals that it plans to increase forces in the region.

This isn’t the first time a senior U.S. politician has visited the self-governing, democratically run island that China considers a breakaway province. Pelosi isn’t even the first speaker of the House to visit; that precedent-setting trip was made by Newt Gingrich in April 1997 . But that trip came in another era when the balance of power between the U.S. and China looked different. And even back then, Beijing has reacted to these kinds of visits largely by accelerating military exercises in the area and sending aircraft across the Taiwan Strait’s median-line.

When former Secretary of Health and Human Services Alex Azar made a visit in August 2020, China dispatched J-11 and J-10 fighter planes into Taiwan’s side of the median-line. This April, the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) sent fighter and bomber planes in the South China Sea and in areas near Taiwan at the same time U.S. senators were meeting with Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen. Xi’s stern remarks notwithstanding, China is likely to respond in the usual way when Pelosi makes her own visit.

But this doesn’t mean Pelosi’s expected trip to Taiwan would be cost-free to the U.S. It will introduce further turbulence into the U.S.-China relationship, arguably the most important bilateral relationship in the world.

China’s leadership, and Xi specifically, is already suspicious about Washington chipping away at the “ One China” policy , which opposes Taiwanese independence, recognizes the People’s Republic of China as the legitimate government of China and acknowledges (but does not accept) Beijing’s claims over Taiwan. It’s not hard to figure out why; with every official U.S. delegation that passes through the island, and every arms package that gets approved, Beijing’s doubts only get thicker.

Read More: The Risks of Biden’s Vow to Defend Taiwan

Biden’s actions to date haven’t helped dissipate the fog. His decision to invite the Taiwanese representative in Washington to his inauguration ceremony was a precedent-setting event and came awfully close to violating the “One China” principle, while rhetorical slip-ups—like the suggestion that the U.S. would intervene militarily if Taiwan was attacked—churned up a storm his aides had to immediately walk-back.

If Speaker Pelosi’s trip to Taiwan goes ahead, Beijing will make a lot of noise and issue the kinds of dramatic statements that long ago became customary. And a large-scale security crisis will likely be averted.

But we should be clear about the cost-benefit analysis. Other than grandstanding, there are no tangible benefits attached to Pelosi’s visit. The costs, however, will be a U.S.-China relationship that continues to travel down the path of a full-blown strategic rivalry, where responsible competition and dialogue are increasingly viewed by both sides as a sign of weakness. It’s a scenario both powers should avoid.

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Pelosi confirmed details of her trip to Asia, but did not say if she'll visit Taiwan

The Associated Press

A man uses a magnifying glass to read a newspaper headline reporting on U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's Asia visit, at a stand in Beijing, Sunday, July 31, 2022. Andy Wong/AP hide caption

A man uses a magnifying glass to read a newspaper headline reporting on U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's Asia visit, at a stand in Beijing, Sunday, July 31, 2022.

BEIJNG — The speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi, confirmed Sunday she will visit four Asian countries this week but made no mention of a possible stop in Taiwan that has fueled tension with Beijing, which claims the island democracy as its own territory.

Pelosi said in a statement she is leading a congressional delegation to Singapore, Malaysia, South Korea and Japan to discuss trade, the COVID-19 pandemic, climate change, security and "democratic governance."

Pelosi has yet to confirm news reports that she might visit Taiwan. Chinese President Xi Jinping warned against meddling in Beijing's dealings with the island in a phone call Thursday with his American counterpart, Joe Biden.

Beijing sees official American contact with Taiwan as encouragement to make its decades-old de facto independence permanent, a step U.S. leaders say they don't support. Pelosi, head of one of three branches of the U.S. government, would be the highest-ranking elected American official to visit Taiwan since then-Speaker Newt Gingrich in 1997.

The Biden administration didn't explicitly urge Pelosi to avoid Taiwan but tried to assure Beijing there was no reason to "come to blows" and that if such a visit occurred, it would signal no change in U.S. policy.

China announces military exercises as Pelosi's possible trip to Taiwan looms

"Under the strong leadership of President Biden, America is firmly committed to smart, strategic engagement in the region, understanding that a free and flourishing Indo-Pacific is crucial to prosperity in our nation and around the globe," Pelosi's statement said.

Taiwan and China split in 1949 after the communists won a civil war on the mainland. Both sides say they are one country but disagree over which government is entitled to national leadership. They have no official relations but are linked by billions of dollars of trade and investment.

The United States switched diplomatic recognition from Taipei to Beijing in 1979, but maintains informal relations with the island. Washington is obligated by federal law to see that Taiwan has the means to defend itself.

Washington's "One China policy" says it takes no position on the status of the two sides but wants their dispute resolved peacefully. Beijing promotes an alternative "One China principle" that says they are one country and the Communist Party is its leader.

Members of Congress publicly backed Pelosi's interest in visiting Taiwan despite Chinese opposition. They want to avoid being seen as yielding to Beijing.

China has warned of taking 'strong measures' should Nancy Pelosi travel to Taiwan

Beijing has given no details of how it might react if Pelosi goes to Taiwan, but the Ministry of Defense warned last week the military would take "strong measures to thwart any external interference." The foreign ministry said, "those who play with fire will perish by it."

The ruling party's military wing, the People's Liberation Army, has flown growing numbers of fighter planes and bombers around Taiwan to intimidate the island.

"The Air Force's multi-type fighter jets fly around the treasured island of the motherland, tempering and enhancing the ability to maintain national sovereignty and territorial integrity," military spokesman Col. Shen Jinke said on Sunday, referring to Taiwan.

Pelosi said her delegation includes U.S. Reps. Gregory Meeks, chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee; Mark Takano, chairman of the House Committee on Veterans' Affairs; Suzan DelBene, vice chair of the House Ways and Means Committee; Raja Krishnamoorthi, a member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and chair of the Subcommittee on Economic and Consumer Policy of the House Committee on Oversight and Reform, and Andy Kim, a member of the House Armed Services and Foreign Affairs Committees.

A visit to Taiwan would be a career capstone for Pelosi, who increasingly uses her position in Congress as a U.S. emissary on the global stage. She has long challenged China on human rights and wanted to visit Taiwan earlier this year.

Biden and China's Xi discuss tensions over Taiwan

In 1991, as a new member of Congress, Pelosi irked Chinese authorities by unfurling a banner on Tiananmen Square in central Beijing commemorating those killed when the Communist Party crushed pro-democracy protests two years earlier.

"It's important for us to show support for Taiwan," Pelosi, a Democrat from California, told reporters this month.

But she had made clear she was not advocating U.S. policy changes.

"None of us has ever said we're for independence, when it comes to Taiwan," she said. "That's up to Taiwan to decide."

On Friday, National Security Council spokesman John Kirby tried to tamp down concerns.

"There's no reason for it to come to that, to come to blows," Kirby said at the White House. "There's no reason for that because there's been no change in American policy with respect to One China."

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The Provocative Politics of Nancy Pelosi’s Trip to Taiwan

By Isaac Chotiner

On Tuesday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi landed in Taiwan , becoming the first person of her rank to do so in almost thirty years. Her trip was not officially sanctioned by the Biden Administration, but the President did not publicly dissuade her from going. The Chinese government, which views the island as part of the People’s Republic of China, announced a series of military drills in response. The United States has a long-standing relationship with Taiwan, and is its main provider of military equipment, but it maintains an official distance from the island to avoid angering China and provoking armed conflict. These fears have grown over the past decade as Chinese leaders have espoused increasingly nationalist ideology, and harshly cracked down on protests against their rule in Hong Kong. (The U.S. approach to Taiwan is often described as “strategic ambiguity”; it agrees that the P.R.C. is the only governing authority of China, but maintains an informal relationship with Taiwan.)

I recently spoke by phone with Shelley Rigger, a professor of political science at Davidson College and the author of the books “ Why Taiwan Matters ” and “ The Tiger Leading the Dragon: How Taiwan Propelled China’s Economic Rise .” During our conversation, which has been edited for length and clarity, we discussed the problems that Pelosi’s visit could cause for Taiwan, the divisions among the Taiwanese on how to deal with an increasingly assertive China, and the lessons the different sides of the China-Taiwan conflict have drawn from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

What did you make of Pelosi’s decision to visit?

The core thing that I take away from Pelosi’s visit is that it was ultimately about U.S. domestic politics and P.R.C. domestic politics, and Taiwan was the pawn caught in the middle. Initially, Pelosi’s goal was almost certainly to do a little cheerleading for Taiwan, show that the U.S. cares about it, that we’re paying attention, and that it’s an important friend and partner—that kind of thing. But, once it became this test of wills between Pelosi and her team and Xi Jinping and his team, whether or not it was good for Taiwan fell away, and it strictly became something that people in the U.S. and China were talking about, saying we had to do this because we cannot back down. And I think that’s very unfortunate. It does not benefit Taiwan, probably does harm to Taiwan’s security, and it has insured that U.S.-China relations, which were already pretty bad, are worse than they were before. We may have a much more difficult time recovering than we thought three weeks ago.

Based on what you just said, it seems that Pelosi shouldn’t have scheduled the visit at all, or that American politicians should not try to show support for Taiwan in this way. After China gets upset, there are reasons American politicians do not want to just say, “O.K., you’re upset about it. We’re not going to do it.” The logical upshot is, well, don’t do it at all.

This is totally predictable. We know what is going to happen if we get into a shoving match with the P.R.C. Unless American politicians actually want to drive the most important diplomatic relationship in the contemporary world into the ground, they have to be strategic and thoughtful about the cost and benefit of a particular action.

I don’t oppose American officials’ or policymakers’ doing things that have actual benefits for Taiwan’s security. I don’t oppose arms sales. I would love it if, instead of going to Taiwan, Pelosi had spent some time trying to persuade her party that it’s a good idea to actually set aside its determination to oppose all trade agreements and make some kind of trade agreement with Taiwan, or even try to get the U.S. back into a regional trade agreement, like the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership. What Taiwan needs from the U.S. is concrete action that enhances its security and helps it maintain a strong economy that can continue to hold up the cost of Taiwan’s security and also sustain the standard of living in Taiwan so that people there are enthusiastic about defending their democracy.

The Pelosi visit to Taiwan was never a substantive thing. It was always a symbolic gesture; it was a show of support. From the first moment that they announced that it might happen, my question has been: What concrete benefit does Taiwan derive from this show of support that outweighs the predictable response from the P.R.C.? I have never heard anyone even try to articulate that. They used the slogan “We’re supporting Taiwan,” and then when the P.R.C. pushed back, it became “Well, now we have to go, because Beijing is pushing back.” To me, that is not strategic, it’s not rational, it’s not smart, and it’s not being driven by national-security expertise or thinking.

My understanding is that the Taiwanese government, and even the aspects of the opposition that are seen as pro-China, have welcomed Pelosi broadly and have not criticized the visit, but maybe that’s because they’re in a pretty tough place and they don’t want to piss off the Americans. What’s your reading of the response?

I don’t know whether the Taiwanese encouraged the visit. Maybe they did. I haven’t seen any evidence that they did. The evidence that I’ve seen suggests that the Pelosi team came up with this on their own. I had an e-mail exchange last night with a colleague who said that, when she was in the State Department, if a congressional delegation wanted to come to the country where you were posted, they were coming. That wasn’t an invitation, it wasn’t a request; it was, “We are coming.” Many countries feel that it is impossible to say no to a U.S. delegation.

And certainly, Taiwan would be the last country in the world that would want to offend the U.S. Speaker of the House. The House of Representatives approves arms sales to Taiwan. There’s Taiwan-related legislation pending in Congress right now. You can’t say no. So, whether they initiated or encouraged the visit or not, they talked about it as little as possible. And the ruling Democratic Progressive Party (D.P.P.) representative in the U.S. gave quotes to the South China Morning Post that seem to me to show some reservations about this visit.

When it really blew up, Taiwan had no ability to influence the outcome, and it became a show of strength by a particular American politician. We also know that the State Department, the Pentagon, and the White House had reservations about the trip. This was the legislative branch taking action outside the policy and preferences of the executive branch and with no concrete evidence, that I have seen, of encouragement from the host government.

And what about the response from the Kuomintang (K.M.T.), which is the largest opposition party and favors closer ties to China than the D.P.P. does?

They’re stuck in exactly the same position. The big push for the K.M.T. in the last few months has been to rebuild ties with the U.S., because, during the Ma Ying-jeou administration, from 2008 to 2016, the K.M.T. drifted away from the U.S. There was a growing sense in Washington that the K.M.T. just didn’t seem to care about this relationship. Earlier this summer, the K.M.T. sent a representative, their likely Presidential candidate who’s also the party chair, to Washington. They are also trying not to get crosswise with the U.S. government. Many members of the K.M.T. would be more likely to voice some criticism of [Pelosi’s] visit in normal times, but it’s difficult right now because nobody in Taiwan wants to worsen the situation by adding a Taiwan angle to the U.S.-China angle.

Has China’s current era of aggressive nationalism changed Taiwanese politics?

I think what has changed Taiwanese domestic politics or attitudes toward cross-Strait relations is to some extent the trends that you’re describing, but even more, the domestic development within the P.R.C. In the early two-thousands, I did focus groups with young people in Taiwan about various political topics, including mainland China. One of the things that came out of those really strongly was that they thought of the P.R.C. as kind of scary, but also a place with a lot of opportunity, where you could go and develop your career. I did that same research again, in 2015, with focus groups of young people in Taiwan, and the picture was much darker. What had really darkened the picture was not “Well, they’re in the South China Sea,” or any of that. It was, “Now when you go to China there’s all this surveillance. You have to do everything on your phone, from ordering food to buying a train ticket, and somebody has all that information.” The state knows everything about you, and there’s a general sense that you’re not free in the P.R.C., even compared with fifteen years ago. Admittedly, the P.R.C. was not a free country fifteen years ago, but, from the perspective of young Taiwanese people, it’s got much worse. There are a lot of Taiwanese who have been detained, arrested, and subjected to these forms of detention in which you’re not quite in the legal system, so you may wait many years for any kind of legal action. It’s just scary.

The rising reluctance to engage with the P.R.C., to go to the mainland, to imagine the mainland as an interesting place to try out for a while, is less about the kinds of things that we see and more about the kinds of things that the Taiwanese who do live in mainland China—and there are many of them—see in their everyday lives. That has definitely undermined even further the idea that there might be a possibility for some kind of arrangement that could pass for unification by Beijing’s standards. And Hong Kong further underscores the degree to which it’s just not easy to imagine living under that flag, under that system, without losing much of what makes life good in Taiwan.

And what about in terms of the K.M.T.? What would closer ties actually look like in practice now?

They don’t know, and that’s the problem. Their identity is “not the D.P.P.,” so they try to characterize the D.P.P. as pro-independence, even though the D.P.P. really is not pushing for independence. Mischaracterizing the D.P.P. is an important part of K.M.T.’s approach. In fairness, the D.P.P. does the same thing—it mischaracterizes the K.M.T. as pro-unification, which the K.M.T. is not, at least not as we understand it today. The policy might be characterized as somewhat more open to engagement with China, but it’s difficult to put flesh on. During the Ma administration, the idea was, “We are more secure if the P.R.C. feels like the relationship is stable.”

The Ma administration operationalized that theory through primarily economic engagement and agreements with the P.R.C. Direct flights became finalized, so people could fly from Shanghai to Taiwan without having to go through Hong Kong, and so on. Prior to 2008, money went from Taiwan to the mainland, but people and money rarely came from the mainland to Taiwan.

Another part of Ma’s strategy of trying to ease tension through engagement and interaction was to invite more people and investment from the mainland into Taiwan. As the Taiwan Strait became a two-way strait, people in Taiwan suddenly realized, “Wait a minute—this is not an abstraction. The mainland is coming to us.” People who had never seen someone from mainland China in their entire lives suddenly found their communities overrun by P.R.C. tourists. The number of P.R.C. people in Taiwan went from practically zero to four million in six years, and it was too much. These P.R.C. tourists had no ill intent, but there were so many of them, and suddenly something that had been an abstraction became an everyday reality. Starting in 2012, you see a series of protests, all of which have a similar vibe, which is, “We’re pushing too far. This is going too fast.” For the K.M.T., that approach has already been tried, and it’s been taken to its feasible maximum. It’s very difficult to replace it with something that has the same affect toward the P.R.C. but does not activate the same kind of anxiety in Taiwan. I do not think they have figured it out yet.

What does independence mean in practice? I think a lot of people who don’t know about the issue would say, “What are you talking about? Taiwan is independent—they get weapons from the United States, they have a democratically elected government,” etc.

Taiwan and mainland China have been separated for seventy years but neither side has filed divorce papers. Independence is Taiwan saying to the world, “This is it. We’re filing for divorce.” The P.R.C. would like to get back together. They want a reconciliation. Some people would say it’s not “back together”; it would be getting together with the P.R.C. for the first time. At any rate, the P.R.C. government—and the vast majority of P.R.C. people, I think—would like Taiwan to return to the family home.

They have tolerated this separation for a long time, and I believe that they can tolerate it for a while longer. What they can’t tolerate is the divorce papers. If Taiwan were to take an action that permanently foreclosed any possibility of reconciliation, of bringing the mainland and the island of Taiwan under some kind of common flag, whether it’s the P.R.C. flag or something else, that would be unacceptable to the Chinese Communist Party leadership, and it would have to respond in the strongest possible way. The C.C.P. leadership has chosen that position, obviously—nature does not ordain that it has to act that way. That’s the policy it has created, and that is the corner into which the C.C.P. leadership has painted itself.

Yes, I was going to say that words such as “have to” can make people think that you’re saying they have to for some moral reason.

They have to because they’ve told everyone for forty years that it’s what they’re going to do. And it would be a serious loss of legitimacy for the Communist Party to fail in something that they have made so foundational to their own claim to govern.

Do you have a sense of how the past six months in Ukraine have changed the way people in Taiwan, or the government of Taiwan, or maybe even the government in mainland China, thinks about this issue?

One thing it did was it brought home to citizens, and especially politicians—political leaders in Taiwan—that twentieth-century war is still here in the twenty-first century. This could happen. The idea that we can say, “Oh, come on, it’s 2022, that doesn’t happen”—no, it happened. And it would look at least as ugly in Taiwan as it’s looking in Ukraine, so that’s sobering. I think for the P.R.C. it is an opportunity to learn from someone else’s experience. What does and doesn’t work? Beijing did not expect the West to be as unified as it has been in the face of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Beijing has to think about why that happened and what that might mean for its own plans. The P.R.C. is also going to study the Ukraine war for military lessons. But I don’t think it changes their goals at all. It may affect their timeline by becoming something that they want to watch and study and learn from.

In Taiwan, it has increased people’s sense of urgency to make the necessary military changes that might allow Taiwan to resist. In some ways the successful resistance in Ukraine has been encouraging, and yet, the U.S. response included the decision not to intervene directly, which totally makes sense in terms of U.S. foreign policy. But there was a very sharp decrease in the percentage of Taiwanese who believed that the U.S. would intervene to help Taiwan after the U.S. did not intervene to help Ukraine.

It’s a pretty mixed bag, but none of this is the sort of thing that people in Taiwan think about all day long. We’re paying more attention to the Pelosi visit in the U.S. than my friends in Taiwan are. And that makes sense because I don’t think the Pelosi visit, all of this brouhaha, is about Taiwan at all. It’s about American politicians thinking that this is the moment to poke Beijing or to stand up to Beijing or to prove how macho they are relative to Beijing. And, if Taiwan gets caught in the middle, well . . . ♦

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By Rebecca Mead

What Nancy Pelosi’s Taiwan Trip Says About China

The rancor over the House speaker’s potential visit reveals how badly Xi Jinping needs a new strategy.

Imagine, for a moment, that Nancy Pelosi, en route to Taiwan, is confronted by Chinese fighter jets in the skies near the island. Taiwan scrambles its own planes to her defense. A game of chicken ensues. Who blinks first?

This scenario would be a Cuban-missile-crisis moment, with the United States and China staring at a potential conflagration. And based on Beijing’s strident reaction to the House speaker’s possible visit to Taiwan, it’s not all that far-fetched. “China will act strongly to resolutely respond to [Pelosi’s visit] and take countermeasures,” a foreign ministry spokesperson warned . “We mean what we say.” Hu Xijin, a former editor of a Communist Party news outlet, appeared to threaten violence. “If the US can’t restrain her, let China restrain her & punish her,” he tweeted . “PLA Air Force will surely make her visit a disgrace to herself and to the US.”

The controversy—China regards Taiwan as a renegade province; were she to visit, Pelosi would be the most senior American lawmaker to set foot on the island in a quarter century, an implicit threat to Beijing’s claim—is a sign of just how tense relations between the U.S. and China have become, and of how the chances of war , which seemed remote only a short time ago, have become very real.

But most of all, the rancor reveals how badly Beijing needs a new strategy for Taiwan—and an entirely new foreign policy. Beijing’s hostile approach to the world may be meant to protect and promote the country’s national interests and global ambitions, but in many respects, it seems to be achieving exactly the opposite.

China’s leaders would probably not agree, and certainly not when it comes to Taiwan. They’ve considered unification with Taiwan a top national-policy priority ever since their mortal enemies, the Kuomintang, fled to the island in 1949 after losing the civil war for control of China and established a rival government. To them, Taiwan is an integral part of China. Though Beijing professes to favor “peaceful reunification,” as the Communists call it, the threat that war could break out has persistently loomed over East Asia.

Beijing, too, has always rankled at continued U.S. support for Taiwan. Though Washington upholds the “one-China policy” and does not formally recognize the Taipei government, it has maintained a friendship with Taiwan anyway, even shipping it arms, to the great chagrin of Beijing, which has accused the U.S. of meddling in China’s internal affairs and violating its sovereignty.

Those protests have become even louder under President Xi Jinping. A champion of nationalist causes, Xi has turned up the pressure on Taiwan. Over the past two years, Beijing has routinely sent squadrons of jets buzzing near Taiwan and held other military exercises close to the island, apparently aimed at intimidating the democratic government there. Other countries that show support for Taiwan are met with rabid hostility: After Lithuania allowed Taiwan to open a representative office in its capital in 2021, Beijing blocked imports from the Baltic country.

Thus the extreme reaction to the potential Pelosi visit.

It’s hard to tell which side is escalating matters. Members of Congress have journeyed to Taiwan before—as recently as April—without sparking fears of war. Beijing may be pushing back against what it sees as Washington’s attempts to salami-slice the status quo. But Pelosi is no ordinary representative, either. In Beijing’s eyes, her plan reinforces its fear that the U.S. is pulling Taiwan inexorably into the American orbit. Officially, Washington’s policy toward Taiwan has not changed. But inadvertently or otherwise, Washington has been dropping hints that it sees Taiwan as a core national interest. President Joe Biden included Taiwan in his Summit for Democracy last year, as if it were just another country. In May, when asked at a press conference if the U.S. would defend Taiwan from Chinese attack, Biden blurted out “yes,” apparently deviating from Washington’s standard policy of keeping America’s military commitment ambiguous. (His national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, recently told The Atlantic ’s Jeffrey Goldberg that the comment was in line with the U.S. policy of “strategic ambiguity.”)

Beijing’s intimidation of the Taipei government has, however, heightened alarm in Washington and around the region that Xi is preparing to use force to claim the island. In response, the U.S. and its allies continue to risk Beijing’s ire to show support for Taiwan. Japan, for instance, allowed Taiwan’s vice president to attend the funeral of former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe earlier this month (officially as a private citizen).

The fact is, Xi has been frosty toward Taiwan for some time. In the past, Beijing and Taipei have been able to hold a dialogue, sometimes with fruitful results: In 2010, the two sides inked an economic-cooperation pact . But no serious talks have taken place since Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen took office six years ago. Xi appears to perceive the Tsai administration as especially threatening. She represents the Democratic Progressive Party, a political movement that is cold to Beijing’s notions on unification. Tsai has personally deemed Xi’s calls for unification “ impossible ” and has launched programs to reduce Taiwan’s economic reliance on China while seeking closer ties to America. In a sense, she is just following the will of her citizens. The thought of unification with China holds little appeal in Taiwan, while its people grow more sympathetic to the idea of declaring formal independence—a step Beijing would find intolerable. In one recent survey in Taiwan , a mere 8 percent of respondents had a positive view of the mainland government.

Beijing’s fiery rhetoric and military harassment are not likely to woo them back into the fold. That’s typical of Xi’s entire foreign policy. China’s leaders, for instance, are worried about becoming ring-fenced by American allies, but their aggressive stance on territorial disputes, extensive military buildup, and warming friendship with Russia are making that outcome inevitable. Much attention has been paid to Finland and Sweden joining NATO in the months since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, but what was widely noticed in Asia was that the leaders of Japan, South Korea, Australia, and New Zealand attended a NATO summit last month. China has “become more assertive and more willing to challenge international rules and norms,” New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern warned , adding that “we must respond to the actions we see.” India, long wary of allying with Washington, is becoming more engaged in the Quad, a security partnership with Australia, Japan, and the United States that is developing into an anti-China coalition.

No change in Xi’s approach is on the horizon, however. Beijing apparently has come to believe it can compel neighbors and adversaries to submit to its wishes and align their policies with China’s interests. At the moment, that’s contributing to a standoff over Pelosi’s proposed visit. Though it’s unlikely China’s leaders actually want war, their stern warnings almost force them into some especially belligerent response, leaving open the threat of unintended consequences. In the mid-1990s, after Washington infuriated Beijing by allowing Taiwan’s then-president to travel to the U.S., the Chinese staged military exercises and shot missiles into the seas near Taiwan as a sign of what might come next time. A Pelosi visit might demand a similar response, or something even more threatening.

Her proposed visit and China’s reaction are painting all parties in uncomfortable corners. If Beijing allows Pelosi to visit Taiwan without a response, China’s leadership will look helpless and humiliated. If Pelosi cancels or postpones, the Biden administration will look as if it was bullied by Chinese threats. Even Taiwan, usually eager for international support, will have to calculate if hosting Pelosi is worth the risks.

All of this melodrama could be avoided if Beijing aimed to win hearts and minds instead of scaring them. If the country took a more practical approach to Taiwan that realistically accounted for the island’s growing political and economic importance, it could ease fears both in Taiwan and around the region. Even if Xi believes his tough line is responding to U.S. provocations, his saber-rattling is a choice. He has others—such as constructive dialogue—that may better serve his ultimate goals and long-term interests. Until then, Xi will find that he is creating crises instead of resolving them.

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EDITORIAL: The real purpose of Pelosi's visit to Taiwan

• Oops! Something went wrong. Please try again later. More content below

Aug. 4—U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi 's visit to Taiwan on Monday seemed, on the surface, like a bad idea. President Joe Biden , a Democrat just like Pelosi, was originally against it. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Republican, was all for it, as were other Republicans. Except for one: former President Donald Trump . "Why is crazy Nancy in Taiwan?" he wrote on his social media platform. "Always causing trouble. Nothing she does turns out well (Two failed Impeachments, loss of House, etc.). WATCH!" he added.

Therein lies the true reason for Pelosi's visit to Taiwan. So she could make a point about Trump's quest for ultimate power in the United States. Her trip was as much a message to the international community as it was to U.S. voters.

"We take this trip at a time when the world faces a choice between autocracy and democracy.," she said after landing in that country. "As Russia wages its premeditated, illegal war against Ukraine, killing thousands of innocents — even children — it is essential that America and our allies make clear that we never give in to autocrats. ... By traveling to Taiwan, we honor our commitment to democracy: reaffirming that the freedoms of Taiwan — and all democracies — must be respected."

"All democracies." Given what we have learned from the Jan. 6 hearings, she certainly must be including the United States in the category of democracies facing possible extinction at the hands of an autocrat. Protesters who stormed the U.S. Capitol that day, some armed, others carrying zip-ties, many of them shouting "hang Mike Pence" while others threatened to murder Pelosi — were just steps away from taking irreversible action that could actually have toppled the republic. Pelosi knows this. And she knows Trump is to blame for the carnage that day, having riled up his followers and then refusing, until the last, possible moment, to call them off and send them home.

So while Pelosi's trip to Taiwan riled up China's leadership and went against the wishes of her own president, her larger message may be more important. China is like the big bully in the playground. The country swaggers around the globe, throwing money at countries it wants to co-opt while threatening to invade those that don't accede to its autocratic wishes. What they did in Hong Kong is a good example of what they'd probably do in Taiwan. In Hong Kong, the crackdown has been brutal.

"In 2020, Beijing imposed a sweeping national security law on Hong Kong," according to the Council on Foreign Relations, an independent think tank. "Since then, authorities have arrested dozens of pro-democracy activists, lawmakers, and journalists; curbed voting rights; and limited freedoms of the press and speech. These moves have not only drawn international condemnation but have also raised questions about Hong Kong's status as a global financial hub and dimmed hopes that the city will ever become a full-fledged democracy."

The same thing could happen in Taiwan, although an invasion would be much more difficult, as the island nation sits about 100 miles off the coast. Another argument against Pelosi's visit — that it would ratchet up tensions between the U.S. and China and possibly even prompt an invasion — seems reasonable given the fact that starting Thursday military exercises using live fire are expected to start in the Taiwan Strait and even stray into Taiwanese territory. Impinging on another country's sovereign territory is considered an act of war. That doesn't seem to matter to China.

Short of an actual invasion, it seems Pelosi's visit to Taiwan worked out pretty well, showing how the U.S. doesn't back down from playground bullies while also showing domestic voters and Donald Trump that the U.S. should never capitulate to dictators or wannabe-autocrats.

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What’s at stake with Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan

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After much speculation, Speaker of House Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) has landed in Taiwan. The will-she, won’t-she drama over whether Pelosi and a delegation of Democratic lawmakers will visit the self-governing island during a longer trip to Asia ended Monday after Taiwanese sources confirmed her arrival. In an op-ed published Tuesday in The Washington Post , Pelosi said her presence in Taiwan was “an unequivocal statement that America stands with Taiwan, our democratic partner, as it defends itself and its freedom.”

The prospect of the third-most senior figure in U.S. government visiting the world’s only Chinese-speaking democracy had roiled Asia’s already choppy geopolitical waters. Ever since the Russian invasion of Ukraine, attention in Washington has also centered on the risk of war over Taiwan . China views the island as part of its sovereign territory and Chinese President Xi Jinping has cast reunification with the mainland as an inevitability, the crowning ambition of his rule.

The United States, meanwhile, has in practice shifted steadily away from its official policy of “strategic ambiguity” over whether it would come to Taiwan’s defense. President Biden and a host of lawmakers in Congress all explicitly believe the United States should help Taiwan fight off a Chinese attack. Amid growing bipartisan support for a tighter U.S. embrace of Taiwan, Pelosi’s arrival would mark the most significant visit of a U.S. official to Taiwan in a quarter-century. But in Beijing’s eyes, it’s a dangerous provocation and an infringement of its “territorial integrity.”

“We once again sternly warn the U.S. side that China stands at the ready and the Chinese People’s Liberation Army will never sit idly by,” Zhao Lijian, a spokesman for the Chinese Foreign Ministry, warned at a briefing Monday, adding that “China will take resolute and vigorous countermeasures.”

White House warns China not to overreact to potential Pelosi visit to Taiwan

Experts have a rough sense of what those countermeasures may be . “The response will almost certainly include a military component, most likely with a show of force in the first instance — live fire exercises, a much greater military presence within the Taiwan Strait and … even missile tests,” tweeted M. Taylor Fravel , director of the Security Studies Program at MIT.

But the show of force will have to come with a demonstration of restraint.

“The goal will be to underscore resolve without sparking escalation, but the likely prominence to the military component will include the potential for miscalculation,” Fravel said. “There are also significant U.S. naval assets in the region at the moment.”

China’s state media organs have been careful in their warnings to the United States, a sign, perhaps, of Beijing’s own wariness of an unintended escalation.

“I don’t think that up to now there have been any signs that China will launch major military operations,” said Kuo Yujen, a political science professor at the National Sun Yat-sen University in southern Taiwan, to the New York Times . “If China overreacts, bringing countermeasures from the U.S. or Japan, for Xi Jinping, the losses would outweigh the gains.”

Ahead of a major Communist Party Congress later this year, and beset by myriad other problems, including lingering coronavirus lockdowns and a slowing economy, Xi and his allies may not want to rock the boat.

“There is little reason that China will want to shoot itself in the foot by initiating major military confrontation, and undermine the very stability that it craves,” Wen-Ti Sung, political scientist at Australian National University’s Taiwan Studies Program, told my colleague Karina Tsui.

. @SpeakerPelosi . Nancy, I'll go with you. I'm banned in China, but not freedom-loving Taiwan. See you there! — Mike Pompeo (@mikepompeo) July 24, 2022

It’s also unclear how much the United States gains with Pelosi showing up in Taiwan. Her presence will constitute a statement of support for Taiwan’s democracy and perhaps even its aspirations for formal independence, though the United States generally avoids commenting on the latter. The most enthusiastic U.S. supporters of a Pelosi visit to Taiwan include hawkish former Trump administration officials.

“A symbolic show of support by the head of U.S.’s legislative branch could give reassurance, while still retaining enough plausible deniability, and not overtly crossing Beijing’s red lines, as her decision does not represent U.S. policy,” Sung said.

But that’s not how China will interpret the occasion. White House officials, including Biden himself, suggested to reporters that they would rather Pelosi not visit, given the delicacy of the moment. Taiwan was at the heart of a testy phone call between Biden and Xi at the end of last week.

One reading of Pelosi’s determination to stop in Taipei may be that she is wary of the optics of backing out after it emerged she may go. That, skeptics contend, is not justification enough.

“Had Pelosi not said she was going to Taiwan in the first place, no one would be suggesting she needed to go in order bolster American credibility in Asia,” left-leaning commentator Peter Beinart wrote. “The argument that she can’t back down now resembles the argument that the U.S. couldn’t leave Vietnam because the war had become a test of U.S. resolve.”

On Monday, the White House changed tune, casting a possible Pelosi visit to Taiwan as a reflection of continuing U.S. commitments to the island nation.

“There is no reason,” a National Security Council spokesman told reporters , “for Beijing to turn a potential visit consistent with long-standing U.S. policy into some sort of crisis.”

Wary of China threat, Taiwanese join Ukraine’s fight against Russia

Yet analysts on both sides see a crisis on the horizon. “Each of the main players — China, Taiwan, and the United States — believe it is acting prudently to protect its interests in the face of escalatory actions from the other side of the Strait,” wrote Ryan Hass , senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, in a preface to a new report on U.S.-Taiwan policy. “Officials and analysts increasingly are competing to forecast when conflict could break out, not whether it will occur.”

“The Biden administration has continued the Trump administration’s strategy of ‘using Taiwan to contain China,’ ” wrote Cao Qun , a researcher at the state-run China Institute of International Studies. “The chances of a clash between China and the United States in the Taiwan Strait are growing.”

This column has been updated.

Pelosi’s trip to Taiwan is high-risk, low-reward

The speaker of the house’s decision to visit the island is only helping to escalate tensions with china — all without serving any real purpose..

When it comes to his foreign policy agenda, President Biden has a lot on his plate. There’s the war in Ukraine, global supply chain disruptions, and the United States’ deteriorating relationship with China. The last thing the president needs is a crisis that strains US-China relations even further, or worse, one that pulls Americans closer to military conflict.

That’s why it raised more than a few eyebrows when news broke that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi intended to visit Taiwan, the first visit to the self-ruled island from a major US official since Newt Gingrich went in 1997 when he was speaker of the House. China, which claims Taiwan to be its own, made clear that it viewed Pelosi’s plan as a threat and that its military “will not sit idly by” if the speaker proceeds to travel there.

That is, without question, an undue escalation of rhetoric on China’s part and further evidence of China’s growing bellicosity regarding Taiwan. Pelosi ignored that warning and landed in Taiwan Tuesday, and as a member of Congress, she has a right to make that trip and meet with Taiwanese officials. Her doing so does not reflect official US policy of any kind, as she does not represent the Biden administration abroad, and Beijing should know that.

The question is whether any of this was even necessary. While China viewing the visit as a provocation and issuing a warning with ever so thinly-veiled military threats is certainly a condemnable overreaction, it’s not surprising that it would object to a high-profile visit. And given the need for China’s cooperation on a host of global crises — from streamlining supply chains to combating climate change to helping rein in Russia’s aggression in Ukraine — this was clearly not the best time for Pelosi to plan such a trip, one that she undoubtedly knew could cause a great deal of drama. So why would she run the risk of giving China an excuse to nudge the two nations further toward the brink of military conflict?

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For her part, Pelosi has long been a critic of the Chinese Communist Party and an advocate for promoting democracy in the region. In the 1990s, she admirably stood up for pro-democracy protesters by unfurling a banner in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square that read, “To those who died for democracy,” which commemorated the peaceful protesters who were massacred there a few years prior.

So with Taiwan being a strong democracy of its own, Pelosi has been a natural ally. In an op-ed in The Washington Post that published upon her arrival in Taipei, the speaker said that her trip is about sending a strong message that America stands with Taiwan. “We cannot stand by as the CCP proceeds to threaten Taiwan — and democracy itself,” Pelosi wrote. Many Taiwanese officials, and their constituents, have been supportive of her plan to visit, in part because Taiwan has been isolated from the rest of the world, despite its economic strength.

But at the end of the day, one has to wonder what purpose Pelosi’s trip serves other than to signal her toughness on China. Does it tangibly advance US or Taiwanese interests? The answer is certainly not enough to warrant such a precarious standoff between the two countries, and this all may have been avoided had the speaker coordinated more closely with the White House.

Biden let slip weeks ago that the US military does not believe Pelosi’s visit is wise, but the fact that it’s happening points to a broader problem that goes well beyond Pelosi: The Biden administration has not articulated an official policy on Taiwan. That is, of course, in line with the United States’ long-held posture of “strategic ambiguity” on the matter — while the United States has long supported the “One China” policy, which accepts that Taiwan is a part of mainland China, it has not defined what “One China” would actually look like or how it should be accomplished, other than that it should be peaceful. That is what has ultimately allowed US officials to continue working with Taiwan without triggering a forceful response from China.

But the United States has slowly been breaking away from that understanding. Donald Trump famously questioned the “One China” policy before promising to honor it like his predecessors. And since becoming president, Biden has taken steps toward a bolder stance on Taiwan by easing restrictions on US officials meeting with their Taiwanese counterparts, and saying on three occasions that the United States would take military steps to defend Taiwan if China invaded the island in a Ukraine-like invasion.

The Biden administration needs to offer a better direction on US policy on Taiwan — before more politicians like Pelosi begin acting like a new era has already been ushered in. Otherwise, Biden shouldn’t make bold statements if he wants people to temper their expectations as he continues to manage increasingly tense relations with Beijing.

None of this is to say that China is right to tell American officials what they can and cannot do, or that the United States should not do more to support Taiwan. To the contrary, this editorial board has argued in favor of departing, to some degree, from strategic ambiguity. But the key to doing so is through measured, slow-and-steady steps. Whatever Pelosi’s intentions for this trip were — and no matter how inappropriate China’s response to it has so far been — it’s undeniable that making it in this particular moment is not a careful approach. And for now, that makes Biden’s job that much more difficult.

Editorials represent the views of the Boston Globe Editorial Board. Follow us @GlobeOpinion .

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What does Taiwan get from the foreign aid bill and why is the US economy among the biggest winners?

The sweeping foreign aid package passed by congress has drawn the ire of China, but billions of dollars will actually stay in the US

Taiwan’s president Tsai Ing-wen has praised the US Congress for passing a sweeping foreign aid package this week which included arms support for the island, and has drawn the ire of China.

After months of delays and contentious debate, the bill was signed into law by Joe Biden on Wednesday . Described as $95bn in aid for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan, the legislation actually contains provisions that broadly affect many parts of the Asia-Pacific, while also spending billions of dollars at home in America.

House Republicans billed the $8.1bn for the Indo-Pacific as an effort to “counter communist China and ensure a strong deterrence in the region,” however the largest provision of funding is for projects in the US itself.

In the face of delayed shipbuilding projects, $3.3bn of the bill will go towards the US domestic submarine-building industry.

$1.9bn is designated for a Columbia-class submarine – America’s newest class of nuclear-powered submarine – the first of which is due to be delivered in 2027. Another $200m is designated for a Virginia-class submarine.

The vast majority of this money will be spent in the United States, with more than 16,000 suppliers across all 50 states set to benefit, according to Connor Fiddler at the Foreign Policy Research Institute.

“Nearly half of the Indo-Pacific appropriations directly reinforce the submarine industrial base,” Fiddler wrote in his analysis of the package . “While this investment will enhance deterrence in the Indo-Pacific, the immediate impact will be supporting the American economy.”

The submarine funding was a condition of congressional endorsement of the Aukus deal between the US, UK and Australia, and is aimed at ensuring the US can produce Virginia-class nuclear-powered submarines for Australia without undermining its own capability requirements.

Another $2bn of funding in the aid package will go towards the foreign military financing program for Taiwan and other security partners in the Indo-Pacific, who the US says are “confronting Chinese aggression.”

According to US officials, the foreign financing program allows eligible partner nations to “purchase US defense articles, services, and training”.

A further $1.9bn will go towards defence related expenses provided to Taiwan and other regional partners, while $542m will specifically strengthen US military capabilities in the region.

On Wednesday, China criticised the package, saying that such funding was pushing Taiwan into a “dangerous situation.”

Beijing’s Taiwan Affairs Office said the aid “seriously violates” US commitments to China and “sends a wrong signal to the Taiwan independence separatist forces.”

Separately, Taiwan has signed billions in contracts with the US for latest-generation F-16V fighter jets, M1 Abrams main battle tanks and the HIMARS rocket system, which the US has also supplied to Ukraine.

The United States is Taiwan’s most important international backer and arms supplier even in the absence of formal diplomatic ties. China, which views Taiwan as its own territory, has repeatedly demanded arms sales stop.

The Associated Press contributed to this report

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Blinken begins key China visit as tensions rise over new US foreign aid bill

Secretary of State Antony Blinken waves as he boards a plane, Tuesday, April 23, 2024, at Andrews Air Force Base, Md., en route to China. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein, Pool)

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SHANGHAI (AP) — U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken has begun a critical trip to China armed with a strengthened diplomatic hand following Senate approval of a foreign aid package that will provide billions of dollars in assistance to Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan as well as force TikTok’s China-based parent company to sell the social media platform -– all areas of contention between Washington and Beijing.

Blinken arrived in Shanghai on Wednesday just hours after the Senate vote on the long-stalled legislation and shortly before President Joe Biden is expected to sign it into law to demonstrate U.S. resolve in defending its allies and partners. Passage of the bill will add further complications to an already complex relationship that has been strained by disagreements over numerous global and regional disputes.

Still, the fact that Blinken is making the trip — shortly after a conversation between Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping, a similar visit to China by Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and a call between the U.S. and Chinese defense chiefs — is a sign the two sides are at least willing to discuss their differences.

Of primary interest to China, the bill sets aside $8 billion to counter Chinese threats in Taiwan and the broader Indo-Pacific and gives China’s ByteDance nine months to sell TikTok with a possible three-month extension if a sale is in progress. China has railed against U.S. assistance to Taiwan, which it regards as a renegade province, and immediately condemned the move as a dangerous provocation. It also strongly opposes efforts to force TikTok’s sale.

The bill also allots $26 billion in wartime assistance to Israel and humanitarian relief to Palestinians in Gaza, and $61 billion for Ukraine to defend itself from Russia’s invasion. The Biden administration has been disappointed in China’s response to the war in Gaza and has complained loudly that Chinese support for Russia’s military-industrial sector has allowed Moscow to subvert Western sanctions and ramp up attacks on Ukraine.

Even before Blinken landed in Shanghai — where he will have meetings on Thursday before traveling to Beijing — China’s Taiwan Affairs Office slammed the assistance to Taipei, saying it “seriously violates” U.S. commitments to China, “sends a wrong signal to the Taiwan independence separatist forces” and pushes the self-governing island republic into a “dangerous situation.”

China and the United States are the major players in the Indo-Pacific and Washington has become increasingly alarmed by Beijing’s growing aggressiveness in recent years toward Taiwan and Southeast Asian countries with which it has significant territorial and maritime disputes in the South China Sea .

The U.S. has strongly condemned Chinese military exercises threatening Taiwan, which Beijing regards as a renegade province and has vowed to reunify with the mainland by force if necessary. Successive U.S. administrations have steadily boosted military support and sales for Taiwan, much to Chinese anger.

A senior State Department official said last week that Blinken would “underscore, both in private and public, America’s abiding interest in maintaining peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait. We think that is vitally important for the region and the world.”

In the South China Sea, the U.S. and others have become increasingly concerned by provocative Chinese actions in and around disputed areas.

In particular, the U.S. has voiced objections to what it says are Chinese attempts to thwart legitimate maritime activities by others in the sea, notably the Philippines and Vietnam. That was a major topic of concern this month when Biden held a three-way summit with the prime minister of Japan and the president of the Philippines.

On Ukraine, which U.S. officials say will be a primary topic of conversation during Blinken’s visit, the Biden administration said that Chinese support has allowed Russia to largely reconstitute its defense industrial base, affecting not only the war in Ukraine but posing a threat to broader European security.

“If China purports on the one hand to want good relations with Europe and other countries, it can’t on the other hand be fueling what is the biggest threat to European security since the end of the Cold War,” Blinken said last week.

China says it has the right to trade with Russia and accuses the U.S. of fanning the flames by arming and funding Ukraine. “It is extremely hypocritical and irresponsible for the U.S. to introduce a large-scale aid bill for Ukraine while making groundless accusations against normal economic and trade exchanges between China and Russia,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin said Tuesday.

On the Middle East, U.S. officials, from Biden on down, have repeatedly appealed to China to use any leverage it may have with Iran to prevent Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza from spiraling into a wider regional conflict.

While China appears to have been generally receptive to such calls — particularly because it depends heavily on oil imports from Iran and other Mideast nations — tensions have steadily increased since the beginning of the Gaza war in October and more recent direct strikes and counterstrikes between Israel and Iran.

Blinken has pushed for China to take a more active stance in pressing Iran not to escalate tensions in the Middle East . He has spoken to his Chinese counterpart, Wang Yi, several times urging China to tell Iran to restrain the proxy groups it has supported in the region, including Hamas, Lebanon’s Hezbollah, Yemen’s Houthis and Iranian-backed militias in Iraq and Syria.

The senior State Department official said Blinken would reiterate the U.S. interest in China using “whatever channels or influence it has to try to convey the need for restraint to all parties, including Iran.”

The U.S. and China are also at deep odds over human rights in China’s western Xinjiang region, Tibet and Hong Kong, as well as the fate of several American citizens that the State Department says have been “wrongfully detained” by Chinese authorities, and the supply of precursors to make the synthetic opioid fentanyl that is responsible for the deaths of thousands of Americans.

China has repeatedly rejected the American criticism of its rights record as improper interference in its internal affairs. Yet, Blinken will again raise these issues, according to the State Department official.

Another department official, who also spoke on condition of anonymity to preview Blinken’s private talks with Chinese officials, said China had made efforts to rein in the export of materials that traffickers use to make fentanyl but that more needs to be done.

The two sides agreed last year to set up a working group to look into ways to combat the surge of production of fentanyl precursors in China and their export abroad. U.S. officials say they believe they had made some limited progress on cracking down on the illicit industry but many producers had found ways to get around new restrictions.

“We need to see continued and sustained progress,” the official said, adding that “more regular law enforcement” against Chinese precursor producers “would send a strong signal of China’s commitment to address this issue.”