Pelosi’s Taiwan trip raises risk of ‘danger’ and crisis: Chinese experts

• House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is traveling to Asia and may make a controversial visit to Taiwan.
• According to experts, such a visit could increase the risk of a military crisis in the region.
• A former US diplomat told Insider: “If he leaves, China will have to respond and the risk of a crisis will increase.”

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi left on Friday for a tour of Asia that could include a controversial stop on Taiwan, at the heart of growing tensions between Beijing and Washington.

Top Chinese experts are warning that Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan on a military plane could raise the “danger” of a military crisis in the region.

Bonnie Glaser, director of the Asia program at Germany’s Marshall Fund in the United States, said, “There is a risk, not a possible Chinese attack on Taiwan.”

Pelosi will be the most senior US lawmaker in more than two decades to visit Taiwan.

The prospect of Pelosi’s visit to the island has sparked heated rhetoric and warnings from Beijing, with reports suggesting the Pentagon is planning to call for US warplanes and ships to increase patrols near Taiwan if the speaker visits. And repeated mixed messages from the Biden administration about whether the United States would respond militarily to China’s aggression against Taiwan could fuel heightened tensions between Beijing and Washington.

Glazer said there was a threat that Chinese military aircraft would “interfere” with a plane carrying Pelosi and possibly try to prevent it from landing in Taiwan.

That said, if China sends fighters and Taiwan retaliates by arming its own warplanes, “there’s a good chance we won’t see a shot,” Glaser stressed.

But these fighters are flying so close to each other and flying in ways they haven’t before, Glaser said, adding to the potential for accidents. This is the crisis we are facing today.

There is a “real” potential for “Chinese aggression against Taiwan,” but it’s likely to happen “years down the road.”

“It’s an interactive dynamic. The Chinese see what the US is doing and what we’re saying, and then they respond,” Glaser said.

If she leaves, the prospect of trouble goes up.

Win McNamee/Getty Images

China strongly opposes Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan, warning that such a trip could trigger a military response.

Earlier this week, a spokesman for China’s Ministry of Defense said, “The Chinese military will never sit idly by if the US demands that it follow its own course.”

Meanwhile, when Chinese leader Xi Jinping arrived in Taiwan, the two world leaders spoke by phone for more than two hours on Thursday, warning President Joe Biden not to “play with fire,” according to a Chinese government statement.

Pelosi declined to confirm whether she would visit Taiwan, citing security concerns. “I never talk about my trip. It’s a risk to me,” Pelosi told reporters Wednesday.

America’s relationship with Taiwan has a complicated history, and Pelosi’s visit comes at a time when Beijing is racing to upgrade its military and increasingly close ties with the US. Biden has said America is in a race with China to win the 21st century, and senior Pentagon officials have repeatedly highlighted the challenges posed by China’s growing aggression in the Indo-Pacific region.

In the year The US has not had formal diplomatic relations with Taiwan since 1979, when Washington began official relations with Beijing. Under what is known as the one-China policy pursued by successive administrations for decades, the US does not support Taiwan independence and diplomatically recognizes Beijing’s position that there is only one Chinese government. But the U.S. government still maintains strong unofficial ties to Taipei and is legally obligated to provide defense equipment to Taiwan under the Taiwan Relations Act of 1979.

For years, the US has taken a deliberately vague stance on whether it would come to Taiwan’s defense in the event of a Chinese attack — a policy known as “strategic ambiguity.” Biden has been accused of undermining this long-standing approach by repeatedly suggesting that the US would indeed respond militarily if China attacked the island.

The White House has pushed back on Biden’s comments, maintaining that there has been no change in US policy. But critics say the administration’s inconsistent approach to Taiwan has exacerbated a contentious exchange with Beijing.

“The Chinese see Washington as deliberately creating a crisis, and I don’t know what Biden can say to convince Xi,” said Susan Thornton, another prominent China expert and senior fellow at the Paul Chi China Center at Yale Law School. he told an insider.

Thornton, a former acting assistant secretary for East Asia and the Pacific, said: “We will continue to say that our One China policy has not changed, but Pelosi’s visit will be a clear precedent and cannot be seen as consistent with “official relations”. Affairs in the State Department added. If he leaves, China will need to respond, and the risk of a crisis will increase. It will speed up Beijing’s timeline on Taiwan, which is the opposite of what we should be doing.

‘We are not very consistent’

AP Photo/Susan Walsh, file

The United States “needs to be more clear and consistent about our policy” on Taiwan, Glaser said, adding, “The United States has said it does not support Taiwan independence. We need to be clear about what that means.”

But Glaser also emphasized that “this is not one-sided,” adding that the Chinese “have been using economic, diplomatic and military coercion against Taiwan in a very disruptive way.”

“It’s not wrong to say that the Chinese are more to blame — certainly more to blame than Taiwan — for changing the situation in the Taiwan Strait and promoting the instability that exists today,” Glaser said. “But the United States is a factor, it’s not just Beijing and Taipei. And I don’t think this is handled well by the US. Congress is part of it. It’s Congress, it’s the executive branch. It’s just us. It’s very inconsistent.”

Last week, Biden told reporters that US troops do not think Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan is a good idea at this time, although the White House also said that “the Speaker of the House will make her own decision about travel.”

Meanwhile, congressional lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have voiced support for Pelosi to make the trip. Some have suggested that if Pelosi does not go, it will send a dangerous signal that China’s threat to Taiwan will act.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said this week that Pelosi would hand over China if she didn’t leave. “Triumph of sorts.”

Rep. Ro Khanna, a Democrat who sits on the House Armed Services Committee, said Monday He told CNN. Pelosi should not cancel the trip. “We will not allow the Chinese Communist Party to decide where the Speaker of the House should go,” Khanna said, adding that the visit would not affect the One China policy.

Another possible reason for Pelosi’s trip to Taiwan is the ongoing war in Ukraine. Many foreign policy experts have suggested that the conflict will have major implications for China’s approach to Taiwan, although it is too early to say what those will be.

“The Chinese will learn from the war in Ukraine,” Glaser said. “There are a lot of differences if there are similarities, but you learn from it. You learn at a broader strategic level.”

“I don’t think China will jump to conclusions, and I don’t think they will,” Glaser added. Now is the time to invade Taiwan,” Glaser added. “China has its own logic when it comes to Taiwan. .”