Reversal of Rhetoric from China after Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan. What reasons make Xi Jinping adopt softer tones?
It took China 24 hours to go from warnings of a heatwave to pleas for patience as Beijing tried to formulate a coherent position – an official response to Nancy Pelosi’s trip to Taiwan, Bloomberg notes.
Ahead of the visit by Pelosi, the first US House speaker to visit Taiwan in 25 years, President Xi Jinping warned that the Biden administration would “burn”, while nationalist Chinese commentators pointed out that it would “create a diplomatic powder keg”. .
But after Pelosi landed safely, spent the night in Taipei and hailed US-Taiwan ties in a meeting with President Tsai Ing-wen, China’s tone changed from belligerent to defensive.
In a briefing on Wednesday afternoon, Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying asked the public to give the government more time to follow through on threats to punish the US and Taiwan.
“We will do what we have said,” he said. “Well please be a little patient about it.”
Xi Jinping’s failure to prevent Pelosi’s visit in advance has frustrated some of China’s most hard-liners. While Beijing is clearly in a stronger position than the last major crisis in the mid-1990s, it is also far from being able to “derail” the US, the US outlet notes, and goes on to underline that despite the belligerent rhetoric, Xi and other officials are far more concerned with maintaining power for the Communist Party in power and eliminating threats to their rule.
“The leadership wants to appear tough, but it does not want to take steps that could trigger a conflict whose outcome is in doubt. It will bear in mind that while the US was never going to send troops to Ukraine, Taiwan might be another matter,” summarizes Bloomeberg, among other things.
Read the News today and get the latest news. Follow Skai.gr on Google News and be the first to know all the news.
