TAIPEI, Taiwan — House Speaker Nancy Pelosi arrived in Taiwan on Tuesday, brushing aside personal warnings from the Biden administration about the risk that her high-profile diplomatic visit could spark another crisis in Asia and immediately calling for a sharp response from the Chinese government. cause.
A US military plane carrying Ms. Pelosi landed in Taipei late at night after weeks of speculation about her travel plans. Her decision to proceed with the trip — shrouded in official secrecy until the last minute — makes her the top congressional official to come to the disputed island in a quarter of a century and sets a tense stalemate with China that US officials said would may lead to a more aggressive military stance.
“America’s solidarity with Taiwan’s 23 million people is more important than ever today as the world faces a choice between autocracy and democracy,” she said in a statement issued when she was greeted by Joseph Wu, Taiwan’s foreign minister. Affairs, adding that the visit did not contradict United States policy on Taiwan.
China, opposing any alleged challenge to its claims to self-ruled Taiwan, had repeatedly warned Ms Pelosi not to make the visit. Shortly after its arrival, Beijing announced plans for live-fire military exercises, some in areas overlapping the island’s territorial waters. In a separate statement, the Chinese People’s Liberation Army said it would begin a series of joint naval and air exercises, including “long-range fires in the Taiwan Strait”.
The exercises would temporarily block access to some commercial shipping lanes and Taiwanese ports, but analysts said they were intended to project force rather than serve as a harbinger of a Chinese invasion of Taiwan.
“They don’t indicate that we are about to go to war,” said Joe McReynolds, senior China analyst at the Washington-based Center for Intelligence Research and Analysis. But he and others said the rapidly changing situation could lead to a chance meeting that could spiral out of control.
Prior to the visit, the United States had urged Beijing not to turn the moment into a crisis. After a phone call last week between President Biden and China’s president Xi Jinping, China’s foreign ministry condemned Ms Pelosi’s expected visit, saying that “playing with fire will set yourself on fire”.
But Ms. Pelosi, a longtime Chinese critic who visited Tiananmen Square two years after the Chinese military opened fire on student protesters there, was defiant. In her statement, she said her visit to the island 80 miles off the coast of China was a sign of America’s “steadfast commitment” to support Taiwan’s democracy.
“We must support Taiwan, which is an island of resilience,” Ms Pelosi said in an opinion article published on the Washington Post’s website after she landed. In the article, she called Taiwan “a leader in governance,” a “leader in peace, security and economic dynamism” and a “vibrant, robust democracy.”
In Taiwan’s central business district, Taipei 101, once the tallest building in the world and a major landmark on the city’s skyline, was lit up with messages featuring Ms. Pelosi, the highest-ranking US official to visit the island since 1997, when Newt Gingrich, the then Speaker of the House.
Ms. Pelosi’s refusal to be prevented from making the trip is consistent with her decades-long efforts to hold China accountable for its actions. She has repeatedly pushed for legislation in favor of Hong Kong and Tibet; host of the Dalai Lama, the Tibetan spiritual leader; and pushed for a diplomatic boycott of the Beijing Olympics.
Her strong stance on Tuesday was reflected in a rare statement of bipartisan support issued shortly after her arrival: More than two dozen Republican senators, including Kentucky minority leader Mitch McConnell, wrote that her trip was “consistent with the United States.” “. China policy we are committed to.”
“She is a senior official in the US government. But it’s not uncommon,” said New Jersey Senator Bob Menendez, the Democratic chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. “I was there three months ago with five other senators. We have a long history of visiting Taiwan. And so we cannot let the Chinese decide who can and cannot go to Taiwan.”
But the speaker’s arrival was greeted with disdain by Chinese officials, who accused Ms Pelosi of undermining China’s sovereignty. And her visit comes as the Chinese leader, Xi Jinping, has made it clearer than any of his predecessors that he sees uniting Taiwan with China as a primary goal of his rule.
Mr Xi, who has headed China since 2012, is expected to be confirmed for an unprecedented third term as leader at a Communist Party congress in the fall. Prior to that all-important political meeting, Mr. Xi liked to create a strong image at home and abroad, especially on the Taiwan issue.
A statement from the Chinese Communist Party’s Taiwan Affairs Office said any attempt at independence by Taiwan would be “crushed by the mighty force of the Chinese people.”
Taiwan – which has its own military and democratically elected government – has long been a painful problem in an increasingly fraught relationship between the US and China and has become the frontline in a geopolitical showdown over influence and power in Asia.
Led by Mr Xi, China’s most powerful leader in decades, Beijing has taken more aggressive military action in the region and recently made strong claims about the strait separating Taiwan and China, one of the busiest shipping routes in the world. Mr Xi has called for unification with Taiwan as part of China’s national rejuvenation, possibly even by force.
The United States has sent a steady stream of senior officials to show solidarity with Taiwan. Recently, Mr Biden said he will act to defend Taiwan in the event of a conflict. It wasn’t the first time he’s done this, but White House officials have repeatedly reversed those statements, saying a long-standing policy of “strategic ambiguity” over Taiwan’s defense remains in effect.
Publicly, senior White House officials have said Ms. Pelosi’s visit does not indicate a change in official policy, and should be seen by China as no different from other recent visits to Taiwan by members of Congress.
But privately, government officials made Ms. Pelosi made clear that her decision to visit Taiwan would likely provoke China at a time when tensions between the two nations are high and the United States is already helping Ukraine in its war with Russia.
Mrs. Pelosi’s visit was uncomfortable for Mr. Biden. The speaker and her staff insisted that, as the leader of a separate but equal branch of the US government, she has the right to go wherever she pleases. And Mr Biden’s aides stressed that he did not want to be seen as dictating where she can travel.
Officials said Mr Biden had never told Ms Pelosi not to go. But officials made it clear that her trip could significantly escalate tensions, including the possibility that China could use the visit to justify military action against Taiwan.
As the plane carrying Ms. Pelosi approached Taiwan, several Chinese state media reported that Chinese Su-35 fighter jets were crossing the strait, a claim the Taiwan Ministry of Defense called “fake news.” China last sent planes over the median line that runs through the strait in 2020, when Alex Azar, then the US Secretary of Health and Human Services, visited Taiwan.
China claims Taiwan as its territory and has vowed to take it back, by force if necessary. In his conversation with Mr Biden on Thursday, the Chinese leader warned the United States not to intervene in the dispute.
China’s incursions into the airspace and waters near Taiwan have become more aggressive in recent years, increasing the risk of conflict.
In June, Beijing raised the stakes when the State Department 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 scoured the skies near Taiwan, sending Taiwanese fighter jets running amok.
Huang Chao-yuan, a 53-year-old business owner, cordoned off the area near Songshan Airport to watch Ms. Pelosi landed. She said the speaker’s visit was a “historic moment” that “demonstrates Taiwan’s independence”.
But outside the Grand Hyatt Taipei, where Ms. Pelosi was expected to spend the night, several dozen people who supported unification with China protested against Ms. Pelosi’s visit: some demanded that she “leave Taiwan”, and some held banners in which they charged her. .
In Beijing, she is seen as hostile to the regime and its goals.
As a two-term congressman from California, Ms. Pelosi Beijing in 1991, two years after Chinese troops opened fire on student protesters around Tiananmen Square, killing hundreds, if not thousands. Accompanied to the plaza by several congressional colleagues and a small group of reporters, Ms. Pelosi a banner commemorating the dead students.
Ms. Pelosi is a strong supporter of the Dalai Lama and the rights of Tibetans. In 2015, with official permission from the Chinese government, she visited Lhasa, the capital of Tibet, on a strictly controlled trip. The region is usually off limits to foreign officials and journalists.
From student protesters in Beijing in 1989 to anti-government protests in Hong Kong 30 years later, Ms. Pelosi has consistently supported social movements that criticized the ruling Chinese Communist Party. She has also urged Chinese leaders to temper their authoritarian policies, criticisms that have led to sharp rebukes from Chinese officials.
The Chinese community in San Francisco, which Ms. Pelosi represents, supported Taiwan from the 1950s to the early 1990s. Today, it is much more connected to the mainland, in part due to immigration trends and the rise of China’s power and influence in the world, Mr Lee said.
Dozens of people gathered in San Francisco Monday to protest the trip, citing it could fuel a possible war with China. The demonstration included members of the city’s Chinese American community; Code Pink: Women for Peace, an anti-war group; and the US – China Peoples Friendship Association.
Paul Mozuro and Amy Chang Chien reported from Taipei, and Michael D. Shear from Washington. Reporting contributed by Emily Cochrane and Amy Qin from Washington, Thomas Fuller from San Francisco, and Jane Perlez and Mike Ives from Seoul.
