US House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s reported plans to travel to Taiwan have upended Washington’s political divide, with a rift emerging with US President Joe Biden over the visit, while prominent Republicans offer encouragement to a political opponent they normally scorn.
Pelosi’s supporters include a conservative Republican senator, at least two former officials from the administration of former US president Donald Trump and the last speaker of the House to make the trip to Taiwan, also a Republican. They are urging Biden to back the trip even as China threatens a forceful response if she does travel.
Pelosi, a Democrat, has not confirmed the trip publicly. The White House and the speaker’s office have yet to challenge each other directly, and Biden has not said publicly that Pelosi should not go.
Photo: AFP
Biden has made blunting China’s rising influence a core part of his foreign policy ethos, but the Biden-China relationship is complicated and he has sought to avoid unnecessarily aggravating tensions.
The White House is preparing for another call between Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平), a conversation the US president said he expects this week, despite his COVID-19 diagnosis.
The growing chorus pushing Biden to support Pelosi publicly is also raising the risk that the president could be perceived as insufficiently tough on China.
“Speaker Pelosi should go to Taiwan and President Biden should make it abundantly clear to Chairman Xi that there’s not a damn thing the Chinese Communist Party [CCP] can do about it,” US Senator Ben Sasse, a Republican, said on Monday. “No more feebleness and self-deterrence. This is very simple: Taiwan is an ally and the speaker of the House of Representatives should meet with the Taiwanese men and women who stare down the threat of communist China.”
The White House on Monday declined to weigh in directly on Pelosi’s trip — including whether the speaker has Biden’s blessing — considering she has not confirmed it.
“The administration routinely provides members of Congress with information and context for potential travel, including geopolitical and security considerations,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said, without responding directly to Pelosi’s possible plans. “Members of Congress will make their own decisions.”
US Department of State spokesman Ned Price also declined to discuss any concerns.
“I will just restate our policy, and that is that we remain committed to maintaining cross-strait peace and stability and our ‘one China’ policy,” said Price, referring to the US position that recognizes Beijing as the government of China, but allows for informal relations and defense ties with Taipei.
Newt Gingrich, the last House speaker to visit Taiwan, offered support for Pelosi on Monday, posting on Twitter: “What is the Pentagon thinking when it publicly warns against Speaker Pelosi going to Taiwan? If we are so intimidated by the Chinese Communists we can’t even protect an American Speaker of the House why should Beijing believe we can help Taiwan survive. Timidity is dangerous.”
In private, the administration is particularly concerned that a convergence of upcoming events could make a Chinese response to a Pelosi visit even stronger and more animated than it might otherwise be, officials said.
The CCP congress, expected in November, at which Xi intends to further cement his hold on power, is one of those events.
International events in the coming months also could prompt China to react more forcefully than it has in the past if it believes its concerns are being ignored or its president is being disrespected, the officials said.
Those include the annual UN General Assembly in September and several summits in Asia — the G20 in Indonesia, the East Asia Summit in Cambodia and the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum in Thailand — set for October and November.
The officials spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the administration’s perspective.
The US officials said the administration doubts that China would take action against Pelosi herself or try to sabotage or otherwise interfere with a visit, but they said the administration does not rule out the possibility that China could escalate provocative overflights of military aircraft in or near Taiwanese airspace and naval patrols in the Taiwan Strait should the trip take place.
The officials also said the administration does not preclude that China might also step up its actions outside the immediate area of Taiwan as a show of strength, thus possibly expanding military operations in contested areas of the South China Sea.
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