US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan has drawn more support from the opposition so far than from her own Democratic Party.
While the government of president and co-religionist Joe Biden is carrying out a damage containment operation and tries to make it clear that the trip is not a state visit and was decided individually by Pelosi, congressmen from the Republican Party have expressed support for the Speaker of the House, who arrived to the East Asian island on Tuesday (2) under threats of military escalation from China.
In the morning, a group of 26 Republican senators, including Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (Kentucky), released a statement supporting Pelosi.
“For decades, members of the United States Congress, including former Speakers of the House, have traveled to Taiwan. This trip is consistent with the United States’ ‘one China’ policy, to which we are committed. We are also committed now, more than ever with the Taiwan Relations Act,” says the group.
The law cited, when the US recognized China’s communist government in 1979, establishes non-diplomatic relations with the island and says that the country must “retain the ability to resist any use of force or other forms of coercion that jeopardize the security or the social or economic system of the people of Taiwan”.
A number of Republican deputies also expressed support in a decentralized manner on social media and in speeches.
Although communist China’s rapprochement with the United States began in 1972 during a republican government, under President Richard Nixon, the party is historically more combative towards the communist regime in Beijing.
This year’s Pew Research Center survey found that 89% of Americans identified with the Republican Party have a negative view of the Asian country.
This, however, is one of the themes that unites the two sides of American politics. Although to a lesser extent, the same poll found that 79% of Democrats have unfavorable opinions about China.
In a less organized way than in the case of her opponents, Nancy also received isolated support from some parliamentarians in her party, but it is a very different reaction from that of the American president himself. “Well, I think the Army thinks it’s not a good idea right now. [visitar Taiwan]”, Biden said two weeks ago when asked about the visit.
As dissuading Pelosi from the idea already seemed impossible, advisers and advisers rushed to tell the public and their Chinese counterparts that the trip was an independent decision by the congresswoman and that it did not signify endorsement by the US government.
Biden himself said this to Xi Jinping, leader of the Chinese regime, when he “made it clear that Congress is an independent branch of government and that Pelosi makes her own decisions, like other members of Congress, about her travels abroad,” he said. National Security Council spokesman John Kirby in a conversation with journalists on Monday (1st).
To minimize the matter and avoid an escalation of tensions with China, the US government has said that trips by US lawmakers to the island are common.
While none of these recent visits has the political clout of a House Speaker traveling on an official aircraft to an island that the world’s second-largest power considers a rebellious province, it is a fact that American politicians have been hitting Taiwan. Pelosi’s trip caps a bipartisan effort by the US Congress to rally support for the island amid growing US rivalry with China.
In April, for example, the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Democrat Bob Menendez, joined Republican Lindsey Graham, also a senator, on a surprise trip to the island. “Abandoning Taiwan would be abandoning democracy and freedom,” he said at the time.
In June, the two introduced a bill to provide around $4.5 billion in assistance to the island over the next four years and designate it as a non-NATO (Western military alliance) ally.
“Very happy to see that Pelosi has arrived in Taiwan to reinforce our support for the freedom-loving Taiwanese people,” Graham wrote on Twitter on Tuesday. “I applaud the president’s decision to travel at this pivotal time in our country’s relationship with Taiwan, and I look forward to a better relationship with mainland China over time.”
