Hong-Kong
DailyExpertNews
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An anticipated meeting between Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen and US House Speaker Kevin McCarthy this week in California has raised concerns about a repeat of the pressure campaign launched by China last year when then-speaker Nancy Pelosi visited Taipei.
At the time, Beijing surrounded island democracy with unprecedented military exercises — firing multiple missiles into the surrounding waters and sending dozens of warplanes over a sensitive centerline separating the Taiwan Strait.
It also cut contact with the United States on a number of issues, from military matters to combating climate change, in retaliation for what it considered a violation of its sovereignty.
This time, Beijing has already threatened to “fight back decisively” if a Tsai-McCarthy meeting goes ahead.
It also denounced Washington for allowing Tsai to stop over in the US while on his way to and from official visits in Central America, warning that this could lead to a “serious” confrontation between the two powers.
A rebellious Tsai defended her own turf, promising as she left for her 10-day trip that Taiwan would not let “external pressures” stop it from reaching out to the world and like-minded democracies.
But the optics of the meeting, which is taking place in California and not Taiwan, and its timing – at a particularly thorny moment in China’s foreign relations and ahead of a presidential election in Taiwan that could reset the tone of its relationship with Beijing — Beijing could act more cautiously this time, or at least not escalate further, analysts say.
“This puts the burden on China not to overreact, because an overreaction will only push China further away from the world,” said Yun Sun, director of the China program at the Washington think tank Stimson Center.
However, that doesn’t mean Beijing won’t keep a close eye on Tsai’s movements as it calibrates its response — and decides how much military force it will use during its meeting with a US lawmaker on US soil.
The opacity of China’s system — and the potential for conflicting interests within its vast bureaucracy — also make it difficult to accurately predict its response.
“Every time Taiwan does something that China doesn’t like, the Chinese respond with their own military coercion,” Sun said. But in the current situation, “they have to consider the consequences of an overreaction,” she added.
The anticipated meeting, which McCarthy’s office announced earlier this week would take place on Wednesday, also comes at a precarious time in US-China relations.
Washington and Beijing are struggling to stabilize their communications amid escalating tensions over issues from a downed suspected Chinese surveillance balloon to semiconductor supply chains – raising the stakes of potential damage to that relationship if Beijing lashes out as it did when Tsai met Pelosi.
Taiwan is still feeling the effects of that response last August, with Chinese forces now making regular incursions across what was previously an informal but largely respected border of control between Beijing and Taipei in the Taiwan Strait. Taiwan’s official Central News Agency also reported Monday that Tsai would meet with McCarthy, citing Tsai’s presidential office.
But a meeting between Tsai and the Republican majority leader in the US House of Representatives, who is second in line to the presidency, would mark another symbolic moment for Taiwan and the US, which maintain only unofficial ties.
For Tsai, who is entering the final year of her two-year presidency, “it’s clearly a capstone,” said Wen-Ti Sung, a political scientist at the Australian National University’s Taiwan Studies Program. “She has the image of the Taiwanese president who has taken US-Taiwan relations to new heights and who has been able to give Taiwan an almost unprecedented international visibility,” he said.
That increased visibility – and improved cooperation with the US – followed increasing pressure from China on the island, which is less than 110 miles from the mainland coast.
The Chinese Communist Party claims self-governing island democracy as its own, despite never controlling it, and has vowed to take the island, by force if necessary.
Over the past decade, the party has dramatically expanded its military capabilities under Xi Jinping’s leadership — and stepped up its ubiquitous economic, diplomatic and military pressure on Taiwan.
That has raised concerns, among some in Washington, that Beijing is gearing up for an invasion, though China’s official language still suggests a scenario is not the preferred option for achieving its claimed goal of “reunification.”
It’s that pressure — and how to support Taiwan against Beijing’s unilateral actions — that are likely to be on the table when Tsai, McCarthy and a bipartisan group of U.S. lawmakers meet on Wednesday.
Congress has been a pillar of increasing U.S. support for Taiwan in recent years. Lawmakers regularly visit the island and push bipartisan legislation that improves support and cooperation.
While the US shifted diplomatic relations with Beijing decades ago, it maintains unofficial ties with Taiwan and is legally bound to provide the democratic island with the means to defend itself.
Under Washington’s longstanding “One China” policy, the US recognizes China’s position that Taiwan is part of China, but has never officially recognized Beijing’s claim to the island of 23 million.
While McCarthy lacks Pelosi’s decades-long track record on China, the California Republican is now a leading voice pushing for closer scrutiny of Beijing, and a meeting with Tsai could help him polish that image.
Last month, McCarthy told reporters that meeting Tsai in the US would have no bearing on whether he would travel to Taiwan in the future — something he had previously said he wanted to do.
A meeting in California, on American soil, is widely seen as less likely to provoke Beijing than a McCarthy visit to Taiwan.
Pelosi’s trip — the first by a legislator of that rank to the island in 25 years — sparked a feverish nationalist and anti-American rhetoric in mainland China.
This time, so far, domestic conversation in China’s heavily controlled media sphere has been muted significantly.
But the stakes remain high — including for Beijing itself — on how it responds, analysts say.
As Taiwan prepares for presidential elections in January, a fierce backlash could push voters away from Taiwan’s main opposition Kuomintang (KMT) party, which is widely seen as more friendly towards Beijing.
It could also clash with another high-profile trip now underway: a tour of mainland China by former Taiwanese president and senior KMT member Ma Ying-jeou, the first visit by a current or former Taiwanese leader since the end of the the Chinese Civil War in 1949. .
Ma’s tour is a “once-in-a-half-century opportunity to send a conciliatory message between the two sides, Beijing shouldn’t want to mess that up,” said Sung, the political scientist.
China is also well aware that its actions towards Taiwan are in a much brighter global spotlight following the invasion of Ukraine by Russian President Vladimir Putin, a close diplomatic partner of Xi. Putin’s rhetoric about Ukraine is reminiscent of how Xi talks about Taiwan.
Beijing has recently tried to position itself as an agent of peace in that conflict, especially as it seeks to mend frayed ties with Europe.
This week, Tsai is expected to meet with McCarthy, French President Emmanuel Macron and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen will go to China — a key opportunity that Xi may not want to overshadow with military stance.
An aggressive response also risks confrontation with the US, less than six months after Xi and US President Joe Biden called for improved communications during a face-to-face meeting in Bali.
“(A less overtly aggressive response) would imply that Beijing does not want to escalate tension with the US to a level that threatens to get out of hand,” said Steve Tsang, director of the SOAS China Institute in London.
“A reset of US-China ties is not on the agenda, but a reduction in tension is not beyond the realm of possibility.”