This is why China is so on edge about Nancy Pelosi's visit to Taiwan
NANCY PELOSI made a mark with China's rulers early on in her political career, when she held up a pro-democracy banner on Tiananmen Square in Beijing. More than 30 years later, she'd be coming full circle by visiting Taiwan.
As House speaker, she's second in line of succession to the US presidency. That would make her trip to the democratically-ruled island, which China regards as its sovereign territory, an affront to Beijing.
The visit, much speculated upon for weeks, has had social media in a frenzy trying to track Pelosi's plane in Asia. Two people familiar with the discussions said she is expected to land in Taipei on Tuesday (Aug 2). One person said a meeting with President Tsai Ing-wen is on Pelosi's schedule for Wednesday, although another person said such a meeting is still in flux.
Pelosi's trip caps a decades-long record of pushing back against China for its human-rights record and growing global clout. Her stop is bound to further increase US-Chinese friction at a time of military tension and escalating rhetoric.
Pelosi, 82, would be the highest-ranking elected US official to visit Taiwan in a quarter-century. Illustrating the stakes for the US, President Joe Biden's administration repeatedly distanced itself in the lead up to her travel to Asia, saying it has no control over her decisions. Her visit also puts China in a bind - having so vehemently and publicly objected in advance to her trip, and having warned of potential military or economic retaliation, President Xi Jinping can't afford to now look weak.
A committed liberal on most foreign and domestic issues during her 35 years in Congress, Pelosi also is a China hawk and an advocate for the US to promote human rights.
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Two years after Chinese authorities violently suppressed mass protests in Beijing's Tiananmen Square in 1989, Pelosi, then a junior member of Congress, joined a bipartisan congressional delegation that lifted a banner dedicated "To those who died for democracy in China." Chinese police shut down their small protest.
Pelosi regularly commemorates the Tiananmen crackdown. On the 33rd anniversary in June, she expressed support for "activists on the mainland and throughout the region seeking to exercise their basic freedoms and rights" against the Chinese Communist Party's "accelerating human rights abuses" of its citizens.
The California Democrat, who represents a San Francisco district where almost a third of residents are of Asian ancestry, has clashed with presidents of both parties in her criticism of China over human rights.
She has met ethnic Tibetans and the revered Dalai Lama, as well as Hong Kong pro-democracy protesters such as Joshua Wong and ethnic Uyghurs subjected to what US officials call a genocide in China's western Xinjiang region. Beijing denies that atrocities have been committed in Xinjiang.
Pelosi honed her command of China-related issues during her rise in Congress, including as the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee and on the Appropriations Committee, where she had oversight of State Department programmes.
She often repeats variations of a line delivered in May 2021 at a joint hearing of the Congressional-Executive Commission on China and the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission: "If we don't speak out against human rights violations in China for commercial reasons, we lose all moral authority to speak out for human rights anywhere."
She has long sought to link China's trade status to human rights, opposed China's bids to host the Olympics as far back as 1993 and backed Biden's diplomatic boycott of this year's Winter Games in Beijing.
Pelosi's visit to Taiwan, the first by a sitting speaker since Newt Gingrich visited in 1997, is potentially her most controversial act since Tiananmen Square, given the extreme sensitivity of the Taiwan dispute and the awkward timing.
US officials have emphasised trying to "responsibly manage" competition with China and to avoid the possibility of a miscalculation that prompts conflict - and this trip risks exactly that.
Taiwan was a central issue in a call last week between Biden and Xi.
Biden attempted to convey that Pelosi makes her own decisions as speaker and he can't control another branch of government, according to people familiar with the conversation. However, Xi made it clear to Biden how big of a problem it would be for her to visit, these people said.
The official Chinese readout said Xi told Biden that "whoever plays with fire, will get burned".
Chinese officials, including Xi, have stepped up rhetoric about Beijing's intention to unify Taiwan with the mainland by force. Xi is about to gather with Communist elders at a summer conclave, ahead of a crucial party congress in November where he's likely to secure an unprecedented third term in power.
Asked at a news conference Jul 21 about how to deter China from attacking Taiwan, Pelosi said, "I think that it's important for us to show support for Taiwan."
"None of us has ever said we're for independence when it comes to Taiwan," she added. "That's up to Taiwan to decide."
The trip has been a domestic headache for the White House, which is weighing whether to lift tariffs dating to Donald Trump's era on US$300 billion worth of Chinese goods as Biden struggles with the fastest US inflation in 4 decades and faces midterm elections this fall.
Yet Pelosi may have her reasons for going now.
"For Pelosi, this trip could be seen as capping off a long record as a China hawk and human rights advocate while she is still speaker - a position she may have to relinquish following November's midterm legislative elections," Amanda Hsiao, senior analyst at the International Crisis Group, said in comments on how to avoid a new Taiwan Strait crisis. BLOOMBERG
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