The government of Taiwan said on Wednesday (3) that the military exercises that China will carry out around the island in response to the visit of American Nancy Pelosi to Taipei are equivalent to an air-naval blockade of its territory.
Pelosi, a longtime critic of Beijing, met this morning (Tuesday evening, 2nd and early Wednesday morning) with Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen on the first visit by a senior politician in 25 years to the island.
Beijing called the trip that began on Tuesday night (2) a provocation and spent days warning the US and Taiwan about it, including in a phone call between President Joe Biden and leader Xi Jinping. Pelosi, the White House said, traveled of her own volition and was not hampered by Washington’s separation of powers principle, despite having been warned that it would not be the best time for such action.
In response so far, China has warned that it will hold military exercises at six points around the island it considers a rebel province. They will be air-naval simulations using live ammunition, forcing large areas of space closure to avoid accidents.
In practice, as the ministry accuses, this amounts to a blockade, and that was Beijing’s message about the communist dictatorship’s ability to isolate the island if it so desired. This had already been expressed by the Defense of Taiwan at the end of 2021, when assessing how China could try to subject Taipei to its will for territorial integration.
In 1995, after the visit of the then Taiwanese president to Washington, Beijing also resorted to the same expedient: it carried out several exercises with real missile firing in areas around Taiwan. But there, the four affected areas were concentrated in the north and east of the island, and not in its entire surroundings.
In a calculated way, the Military Command of the Eastern Theater of the People’s Liberation Army reported that the exercises will last from Thursday (4) to Saturday (6), thus giving enough time for the plane that brought Pelosi to take off and go to its next destination in Asian tour — Japan or South Korea.
Thus, the military response falls short of something more aggressive and likely to create an armed clash between Cold War 2.0 rivals. The tension around Pelosi’s visit is the worst in recent years between the powers, and comes against the background of the conflict in Ukraine, in which Beijing’s ally Russia has also invaded a neighbor.
For all intents and purposes, the Taipei Armed Forces said that “Taiwan’s sovereignty was violated” with the exercises and that it “will remain on alert”. But, barring other Chinese moves such as a hitherto expected air incursion to test defenses or an accident in the live-fire area, the crisis is supposed to be contained from a military point of view.
At the meeting with Tsai, Pelosi reiterated American support for the island. “Our delegation came to Taiwan to make it unequivocally clear that we will not abandon Taiwan,” she said, for whom “the US determination to preserve democracy in Taiwan and the rest of the world remains iron.”
The American said that China “cannot stand in the way of people coming to Taiwan”, when asked by reporters if there would be other high-level trips by US officials to the island.
Tsai decorated Pelosi, the highest American official to visit the island since his predecessor Newt Gingrich did so in 1997. On that occasion, the Chinese protested, but the presence of an American aircraft carrier in the region and its relative political-military weakness did not lead to to more serious consequences.
Now, with Xi Jinping’s government fully reiterating its assertiveness that began in 2012 and on the eve of the leader’s reappointment for an unprecedented third term in November amid an economic crisis, not to mention the conflagrated world environment, the story is different. .
Before the meeting with the president, Pelosi visited the Taiwanese Parliament, where he heard praise for his visit and discussed topics such as the fight against Covid-19 and economic issues, such as semiconductor production, a vital field of technology in which Taiwan is a world leader. Afterwards, she visits a museum dedicated to democracy in Taipei.
