Despite severe threats from Beijing, the chairwoman of the American House of Representatives apparently wants to make an unofficial stopover in Taiwan. The risks of such a symbolic visit far outweigh its potential benefits.
Nancy Pelosi at a press conference in Washington shortly before the start of her controversial trip to Asia.
Taiwan’s television station TVBS was the first to come up with the scoop: government officials from Washington and Taipei are said to have confirmed that Nancy Pelosi will visit the democratically governed island state after all. In addition, the broadcaster claims to have heard of hotel bookings that suggest the President of the American House of Representatives will arrive on Tuesday evening. Only a few hours later, the American broadcaster CNN also reported that Pelosi’s visit was certain.
This has not yet been officially confirmed. Shortly before the 82-year-old boarded the Boeing C-40C in Honolulu on Sunday, she quickly posted her official appointment calendar: You could read about South Korea, Japan, Malaysia and Singapore. Taiwan, on the other hand, did not mention a syllable of the senior representative of the Democratic Party.
The Taiwanese seem little interested in the discussion
For Beijing it would be at least a small diplomatic point if the controversial island, which Beijing considers part of the communist people’s republic, does not appear on the official agenda. The party cadres in Zhongnanhai, the seat of government, will certainly not be satisfied with that.
On Saturday, the People’s Liberation Army had already sent out an unmistakable warning: It held several military maneuvers with live ammunition along the southwest coast – just a few kilometers from Taiwan.
The verbal threats were also intensified on Monday. On the online platform Weibo, one of the five army commanders of the People’s Liberation Army posted a martial video accompanied by orchestral sounds, showing their own troops in war mode: “Stand ready to fight, bury all invading enemies!” is the headline of the post. Hu Xijin, former editor-in-chief of the nationalist Global Times and a high-ranking party member, also recently called for Pelosi’s plane to be shot out of the sky if other measures should fail.
In Taiwan itself, the threatening gestures hardly get caught, even if the almost 23 million inhabitants would be most directly affected by the effects of this geopolitical conflict. In fact, the island people perceive China’s rhetoric as a background noise that has accompanied everyday life for decades. Those who follow the evening news on local television will mainly see reports about the current heat wave and the fluctuating Covid numbers. The possible visit of Nancy Pelosi is more of a side issue.
Counterproductive action by senior Democrat
Nevertheless, even in Washington’s think tanks, the view has increasingly prevailed that the Democrat had not thought through her well-intentioned but potentially counterproductive support action for Taiwan thoroughly beforehand. The benefits of their rather symbolic trip to Taiwan would be marginal, but the possible risks are comparatively high.
Above all, however, Pelosi has maneuvered the USA into a dilemma that leaves the government in Washington with only poor options: If the speaker of the House of Representatives travels to Taiwan, it will significantly increase tensions in the region. If she still gets cold feet at the last minute, she is signaling to the hardliners in Beijing that threatening gestures pay off.
At the same time, however, China’s President Xi Jinping is under pressure not to show any weakness just a few months before the important 20th party congress in Beijing. A possible visit to Taiwan by Pelosi would even be a welcome template for Xi to make it clear to the US once and for all that they must not cross China’s “red lines” in this conflict.
A few years ago, Washington would probably have ignored such a threatening backdrop. A look at the archives shows just how fundamentally the balance of power between the two countries has changed: when Newt Gingrich, a high-ranking American government official, flew to Taiwan for the last time in 1997, his trip was – despite similar loud rhetoric from Beijing – the “New York Times” only worth a report on page 6. A quarter of a century later, the subject dominated the Anglo-Saxon media for weeks, and even the American military recently let President Joe Biden say that, given the risk of escalation, it did not consider a visit to Taiwan by his party colleague Pelosi to be a good idea.