Taiwan has been left “hurt” and confused by contradictory signals coming out of Washington over a possible visit to Taipei by US House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
Pelosi is planning a trip to Asia that is said to include a visit to Taiwan, people familiar with the matter said.
It would be the first by a US House of Representative speaker to Taipei since 1997.
Photo: AFP
However, US President Joe Biden raised doubts about whether the visit would go ahead, saying on Wednesday that the US military thinks it is “not a good idea right now.”
“From Taiwan’s point of view, Biden’s comments don’t make us feel good. We feel hurt,” said Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Johnny Chiang (江啟臣), who co-chairs the Legislative Yuan’s Foreign Affairs and National Defense Committee.
“Because his comments imply that, first of all, there is a real military danger, and, second, the relationship between Taiwan and US are subject to Beijing, as if US-Taiwan ties are conditional,” Chiang said.
China had warned Pelosi against making the trip, vowing to take a “resolute and strong” response if she lands in Taipei.
“I’m actually kind of surprised,” said Drew Thompson, visiting senior research fellow at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at the National University of Singapore and a former US defense official.
“Normally, the Pentagon is all about deterrence and taking non-military steps to demonstrate resolve and demonstrate support to bolster cross-strait stability,” Thompson said. “It seems kind of out of character for the Department of Defense to be afraid of friction when it’s part and parcel of the bilateral relationship.”
Pelosi sidestepped questions about the trip at a press briefing on Thursday, citing security concerns. “Maybe the military was afraid our plane would get shot down or something like that by the Chinese,” she said.
“We have to be mindful that the People’s Republic of China has a tendency of overreactions and they hope to use such overreactions as a way to deter countries from engaging in meaningful dialogue with Taiwan,” said Vincent Chao (趙怡翔), former political director at the Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office in Washington, Taiwan’s de facto embassy.
“I think these are certainly factors that politicians both here in Taiwan and in the US should continue to keep in mind,” he added.
This is not the first time Biden has made comments that have left observers on both sides of the Pacific scrambling to interpret his intentions. During a trip to Tokyo in May, the president vowed the US would act “militarily” to defend Taiwan in the event of a Chinese attack.
The certitude of Biden’s remarks seemingly upended Washington’s decades-old approach of “strategic ambiguity” about whether the US military would defend Taiwan against Chinese forces, while also adopting a “one China” policy that deems the question of sovereignty over Taiwan as undetermined.
Biden’s latest comments have left Taipei wondering if Beijing’s threats are proving effective in determining the US government’s actions.
“We don’t know whether Biden made those comments intentionally or just a slip of tongue,” Chiang said.
“I think he does have such concerns on his mind. It’s just that, from Taiwan’s point of view, we think that’s not something that needed to be pointed out publicly,” he said.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
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