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Taiwan greets Pelosi warmly, but China responds with punishments and promises further ones.
After weeks of silence ahead of a high-stakes visit to Taiwan, Speaker Nancy Pelosi was anything but understated on Wednesday during a day of high-profile meetings, in which she offered support for Taiwan and irked China.
Ms. Pelosi met with Taiwanese lawmakers and then with Taiwan’s president, Tsai Ing-wen, offering strident assurances of United States support for the island democracy that China claims as its own. In the whirlwind day of events, she was welcomed by crowds of supporters waving banners and followed by the news media and protesters, her closely tracked meetings and movements streamed partly online.
In her wake, she left a crisis, setting the stage for new brinkmanship between China and the United States over power and influence in Asia. Taiwan is now bracing for Beijing to begin live-fire military drills on Thursday, an escalation without recent historical precedent that could encircle the island and drop missiles into seas only 10 miles from its coast.
“Today the world faces a choice between democracy and autocracy,” Ms. Pelosi said during a meeting with Taiwan’s president. “America’s determination to preserve democracy here in Taiwan and around the world remains ironclad.”
The meetings, though light on substance, were widely welcomed in Taiwan as a symbolic victory. Ms. Pelosi’s trip was a rare moment when a major foreign power publicly showed support for the island in the face of vehement opposition from China. Ms. Pelosi made the trip despite discouragement from President Biden, manufacturing a historical moment when she became the highest-ranking member of the United States government to visit the island in 25 years.
The events presented an affront to China. Ms. Pelosi, who headed to South Korea late Wednesday afternoon, solidified U.S. support, praised Taiwan’s handling of Covid and met with human rights leaders, all while reinforcing that even if Beijing could isolate Taiwan, it could not stop American leaders from traveling there.
She also brought economic pledges, calling a trade deal between Taiwan and the United States hopefully imminent and holding a cordial meeting with the chairman of the Taiwan chip giant T.S.M.C. Arguably one of the most geopolitically important companies in the world, T.S.M.C. has been courted by U.S. officials hoping to increase domestic production of microchips.
The trip took place against the backdrop of increasingly heated warnings from Beijing. Along with the military drills, a series of hacks hit Taiwan government websites. And China used its status as Taiwan’s largest trading partner to lash out, announcing new trade curbs on Wednesday, including suspensions on imports of some fruit and fish and a ban exports of sand, a key building material.
Ms. Pelosi’s visit may also damage a push by the White House to shore up support against China from key allies in the region who analysts say have felt sidelined by the trip, and frustrated by the spiraling tensions.
As Ms. Pelosi toured Taipei, the capital, at times an almost carnival atmosphere followed. But the mood was far more menacing across the strait separating China from Taiwan, creating the real potential for a military showdown. China’s live-fire drills would mark a direct challenge to what Taiwan defines as its coastline and territorial waters. Coordinates for the drills indicated they could take place closer than previous tests during a standoff 26 years ago.
On Wednesday, Hua Chunying, a spokeswoman for China’s foreign ministry, also said that more punishments for the United States and Taiwan would follow from Ms. Pelosi’s visit.
“As for the specific countermeasures, what I can tell you is that they’ll include everything that should be included,” Ms. Hua said, according to People’s Daily. “The measures in question will be firm, vigorous and effective, and the U.S. side and Taiwan independence forces will continue feeling them.”Chinese military drills circling Taiwan set up a potential standoff.
Although much attention has been on Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan, the real potential for a military showdown comes now that she has left.
China’s military has said it will conduct a series of live-fire drills beginning on Thursday. A post on Chinese state media offered coordinates for six swaths of sea surrounding Taiwan, three of which overlap with areas that Taiwan says are a part of its territorial waters.Where China Plans Military Drills
The drills, assuming that they go forward, would mark a direct challenge to what Taiwan defines as its coastline. They would also strike at the heart of a decades-long disagreement in which China claims sovereignty over Taiwan, a self-ruled island with its own democratically elected government and military.
A New York Times map of the planned drills shows how in some places they will occur within 10 miles of Taiwan’s coast, well past areas that previous live-fire drills have targeted and within areas Taiwan designates as its territorial waters. Two of the regions where China’s military will shoot weapons, likely missiles and artillery, are inside what Taiwan calls its marine border. In total, the five zones surround the island and mark a clear escalation from previous Chinese exercises.
In its warning, China’s military called for all boats and airplanes to avoid the areas it identified for 72 hours. For Taiwan, and the United States military, a key question will be whether they obey the orders or test China’s resolve to carry out the tests by sending boats and planes into those zones.
The standoff is reminiscent of an incident in 1995 and 1996 called the Third Taiwan Strait Crisis. Back then, China fired live ammunition and missiles into the waters around Taiwan to signal its anger over a trip by Taiwan’s then-president, Li Teng-hui, to the United States, and to raise pressure before a presidential election. The United States then sent two aircraft carrier groups to the area and sailed one through the Taiwan Strait.
The new live-fire drills will occur in areas closer to the island than those in 1995 and 1996, presenting a conundrum to Taiwan and the United States. If China takes action, they must decide whether to offer a show of force similar to the earlier crisis.
Much has changed since then. China’s military is more powerful and more emboldened under Xi Jinping. This summer, Chinese officials also strongly asserted that no part of the Taiwan Strait could be considered international waters, meaning they might move to intercept and block U.S. warships sailing through the area, one of the busiest shipping lanes in the world.
China has wasted little time in signaling that it is serious. On Wednesday its state broadcaster released images from preparatory drills in the area indicating Chinese forces were in the north, southwest and southeast of Taiwan to practice sea assaults and land strikes, aerial combat and “joint containment.”
Also on Wednesday, Taiwan’s military sought to hold the line, while signaling that it did not wish to escalate the situation. Calling the drills a blockade, it said the exercises had intruded into Taiwan’s territorial waters and endangered international waterways and regional security.
“We resolutely defend national sovereignty and will counter any aggression against national sovereignty,” said Maj. Gen. Sun Li-fang, a spokesman for Taiwan’s defense ministry, in response to the drills.
“We will strengthen our vigilance with a rational attitude which won’t escalate conflicts,” he added.Through citrus, sand and fish, China sends an economic message to Taiwan.
Hours after Speaker Nancy Pelosi arrived in Taiwan, Beijing added economic measures to its series of retaliatory moves, suspending exports of natural sand to the island and stopping imports from Taiwan of certain types of fruit and fish.
The bans are a vivid reminder for people in Taiwan that doing business with China, the island’s largest trading partner, can be risky during times of high geopolitical tension. Over the years, Beijing has occasionally put pressure on the island’s economy by restricting access to China’s vast consumer market. Previous bans have targeted Taiwanese pineapples, wax apples and grouper fish, among other products.
China’s commerce ministry said on Wednesday that it had suspended natural sand exports to Taiwan, starting immediately. It gave no specific reason, saying in a brief statement only that it had done so “in accordance with relevant laws and regulations.”
Around the same time, the General Administration of Customs immediately suspended the import of citrus fruit, along with frozen horse mackerel and chilled white striped hairtail. The agency said those products had been found to contain pests and pesticides on multiple occasions and that some seafood packaging had been contaminated with the coronavirus.
Over the years, Taiwan has tried to diversify its commercial relationships with China, Syaru Shirley Lin, a nonresident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, wrote in an analysis last year. Yet while Taiwanese investments in China gradually declined, the island’s trade with China continued to grow. Its economic dependence on China continued through the early part of the pandemic, in part because the Chinese economy was doing well.
“Although they may resist, young Taiwanese looking for work may find China to be one of their best options, and Taiwanese exporters will likely remain tied to China,” Ms. Lin wrote.
Taiwan has sometimes been able to blunt the impact of China’s economic bans. After the one on imported Taiwanese pineapples came into effect last year, restaurants raced to introduce menus featuring pineapple-centered culinary creations, and Taiwanese politicians posted photos of themselves eating “freedom pineapples” on social media.
But some bans have caused lingering economic pain. The one on Taiwanese grouper, in particular, dealt a huge blow to a lucrative industry that had been sending 91 percent of its exports to China.
Chiao Chun, an economic analyst and a former trade negotiator for the Taiwanese government, said the fruit and fish bans would probably not have a major effect on the economy. Taiwan’s citrus exports to China account for 1.1 percent of its exported agriculture products, according to Taiwan’s Agriculture Council.
“The political message is greater than the economic hit,” Mr. Chiao said. Pelosi’s widely watched flight to Taipei took a circuitous route. Here’s why.
Nancy Pelosi’s plane departing Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, for Taipei on Tuesday evening was one of the most closely tracked flights of all time. It was also unusually circuitous, taking a three-hour detour.
The reason: to avoid an area heavy with Chinese military presence.
The United States Air Force plane carrying Ms. Pelosi flew a roundabout route that experts said was designed to avoid escalating one of the most controversial and high-profile diplomatic visits by a U.S. official to Taiwan in recent history.
Data tracking the flight showed Ms. Pelosi’s plane departing from Kuala Lumpur and heading southeast toward the Indonesian part of Borneo, then turning north to fly along the eastern part of the Philippines. A more direct — and shorter — route would have been to fly northeast in a direct route over the South China Sea to Taiwan.
The journey took seven hours — the unusual path adding an additional three hours to a journey that would normally take four hours and 15 minutes, said Ian Petchenik, director of communications at FlightRadar24, the website tracking Ms. Pelosi’s plane.
The flight path was a clear indication that the possibility of military conflict between the United States and China is all too real in the South China Sea, where China has built up its military presence with bases in recent years.
“This move of having the plane bypass the South China Sea is one way of showcasing that there is a genuine interest in managing the crisis and de-escalating the situation,” said Collin Koh, a research fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore.
Flying over Chinese military bases “would have given the Chinese the opportunity to disturb the flight and given them a chance for aircraft interference,” Mr. Koh said. “The risk of such close encounters was too high.”
Officials have described ties between the United States and China as being at their lowest point since 1972, when President Richard Nixon traveled to Beijing to restart diplomatic relations between the two countries. In June, the American defense secretary, Lloyd J. Austin III, warned China against “provocative and destabilizing activity” near Taiwan.
The decision by Ms. Pelosi, the speaker of the House, to visit Taiwan — and her reaffirmation of America’s “unwavering” support for Taiwan’s democracy — has inflamed Beijing, which claims the island for its own. For weeks it was unclear whether she would even go through with the stop in Taiwan during her planned trip to Asia. Then, while her flight was in the air on Tuesday, more than 2.9 million people logged on to watch the flight path on FlightRadar 24, a popular flight tracking site. The heavy traffic load caused the site to falter at one point.
It was the most tracked flight of all time, FlightRadar24 said in a blog post, surpassing even the return flight to Russia of Aleksei Navalny, the Russian opposition leader, after a near-fatal nerve agent attack.
When Ms. Pelosi departed Taiwan on Tuesday evening, interest in her travels was somewhat more muted. Just 92,000 people were watching.Beijing’s threats resonate inside China.
With few exceptions, Beijing’s irate response to Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan found support among Chinese people online on Wednesday. The question for many seemed to be whether Beijing’s military exercises around Taiwan starting on Thursday would send a strong enough a warning.
After a summer overshadowed by economic woes and the grinding toll of beating back Covid-19 outbreaks, Chinese social media was dominated by talk of Ms. Pelosi and the Chinese government’s claims that her visit violated the United States’ commitments to limit high-level contacts with Taiwan. Many also wondered whether it would embolden Taiwanese people seeking formal independence for their island. Biden administration officials have said Ms. Pelosi’s visit is not the first of its kind and does not mean a shift in policy over China and Taiwan.
“Pelosi has inaugurated a great era that naturally belongs to us,” said one widely shared comment on Weibo, a social media service that, like Twitter, allows users to share and comment on posts. “We will take this opportunity to carry out sea and air patrols around Taiwan without any hindrance so they steadily become normalized, and unification will draw closer and closer.”
Chinese social media has come under stricter censorship and government guidance, meaning that users’ comments are no unalloyed reflection of public opinion. Even so, the goal of absorbing Taiwan into China is widely shared by many Chinese people, and the online mood reflected support for Beijing’s combative position.
“The Liberation Army is clearly training in fully blockading the island Taiwan,” said one of the most popular hashtags on Weibo, referring to China’s People’s Liberation Army.
Despite the nationalist surge, some voices called for calm and a sober understanding of the risks of war. After the state broadcaster, China Central Television, shared a story on Weibo about the Korean War, when a company of Chinese soldiers fought back over 30 attacks in 14 days and nights, leaving 53 of 56 of them dead, many users cheered. A few took exception.
“All the war propaganda, all the clamor, lies and hatred, comes from those who never go to the battlefield,” said one comment left below the report on Weibo.
Others found some humor, despite the tensions. One jest shared by many said that the geopolitical strife seemed like a relief after China’s run of bad economic news, including protests over frozen bank accounts and mortgage payment strikes by buyers waiting for unfinished homes.
“In a flash, everyone has stopped caring about bank accounts, mortgage strikes, abandoned building sites and the leaks of private data,” it said. “Pelosi has cured everyone’s internal mental exhaustion.”
Claire Fu, Zixu Wang and Li You contributed research.‘This is America’s fight’: Europe largely stays out of the fray on Pelosi’s trip.
Europe is increasingly wary about China’s human rights abuses in Xinjiang, crackdown in Hong Kong, widespread censorship and pervasive social controls, let alone its technological advances, industrial espionage and aggressive rhetoric.
Nor are Europeans very happy about the “no limits” partnership that China and Russia proclaimed shortly before Russia invaded Ukraine in February.
