Following Pelosi's Visit, China Alters the Military Status Quo on Taiwan.

 House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) visited Taiwan a week ago. To enhance her reputation in international affairs as she may be nearing the end of her political career, Pelosi pledged U.S. support for the self-governing island and its democracy. The leadership in Taipei warmly welcomed her remarks. After all, it was the most major visit by a U.S. official to Taiwan in the previous 25 years.

 

But the moment's symbolism gave the door to a ferocious backlash from China. Pelosi's visit was criticized by Beijing, which sees Taiwan as an integral part of its territory, as a dangerous provocation and proof that Washington is weakening its official position on the island. Even while it has long maintained close but unofficial political, economic, and military ties with Taipei, the United States neither contests nor supports Beijing's claim to Taiwan.

 

Following Pelosi's visit, China was set to conduct live-fire naval drills, launch ballistic missiles, and conduct aerial maneuvers over and around Taiwan for four days. Chinese naval forces positioned themselves in a way that effectively surrounded Taiwan and practiced what experts predicted may eventually be a naval blockade of the island. Chinese state media reported that the country's forces would conduct "regular" drills on the eastern side of the median line in the Taiwan Strait, the unofficial maritime border between the mainland and Taiwan. The drills were extended Monday by the Eastern Theater Command of the People's Liberation Army.

 

Since Thursday, Taiwanese officials have identified more than 50 warships and 200 military aircraft from China in and around their territorial seas. Beijing's efforts to establish a new baseline for its military posture toward Taiwan seem to be picking up speed.

 

According to a report from China Central Television, "Meng Xiangqing, a professor at the PLA-affiliated National Defense University, said in an interview that was broadcast on Sunday that the drills were intended to 'completely smash the so-called median line' and show China's capacity to prevent foreign intervention in a conflict by blocking and controlling the Bashi Channel, a vital waterway between the western Pacific Ocean and the South China Sea.

 

Analysts see this as typical Beijing behavior. Under Chinese President Xi Jinping, Beijing has adopted more assertive and aggressive stances in its many territorial disputes with its neighbors. These include covertly annexing territory in the Himalayas along its rocky, disputed border with India, occupying rocky shoals in the South China Sea, and establishing an "air defense identification zone" over the Senkaku island chain, which is controlled by Japan.

 

"China intends to further modify the status quo in its favor in the Taiwan Strait," stated Bonnie Glaser, a China researcher at the German Marshall Fund, "just as it changed the status quo around the Senkakus in 2012 and the Sino-Indian border in 2020."

 

This maintains its increasing influence on the global scene. "Despite having around 60 times as many people as Taiwan, China's defense spending in 1995 was barely twice as large. The Economist noted that when tensions over Taiwan were at their peak, China spent more than 20 times as much on defense as Taiwan did today. According to the Pentagon, the PLA has equaled or surpassed the United States in terms of the number of ships, submarines, surface-to-air missiles, and cruise and ballistic missiles it can deploy.

 

China can now exert pressure on Taiwan in ways that the United States could find challenging to prevent. According to Bloomberg News, Beijing wants Washington to stop fostering relations with Taiwan and reinstate the diplomatic understanding that has prevented any House speaker from traveling to the island for the previous 25 years. If not, China "may start to restrict Taiwan's freedom to operate off its shores, in the same manner, it has curtailed the island's participation in international organizations since Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-victory wen's in 2016," according to the report.

 

The fallout from Pelosi's visit has been characterized for Washington and Beijing by a disagreement over talking points. Officials from the United States and Taiwan highlight that the speaker's visit was not unusual and that China is making the decision to raise tensions on its own. China, on the other hand, claimed that the United States had violated Chinese sovereignty by discarding its long-standing ambiguity over Taiwan's recognition. It made the decision to put some lines of communication and cooperation with the Biden administration on hold, particularly the ones about climate change.

 

"The United States and China are seriously speaking past one another. Evan Feigenbaum, a veteran American diplomat and vice president for research at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, stated that this issue goes beyond Pelosi. The U.S. believes that Chinese coercion is at play here. According to the Chinese, this is related to the shift from "one China" to "one China, one Taiwan." A new baseline as a result of such a disconnect will be exceedingly unstable.

 

Politicians in other parts of Asia are paying attention. Prime Minister Lee Hsien-Loong warned that "a storm is building" over his rich city-state during a speech on Monday to commemorate Singapore's National Day, in part due to escalating U.S.-China tensions. According to Lee, the situation between the two powers is "unlikely to improve anytime soon." Furthermore, errors or mistakes can quickly worsen the situation.

 

Beijing's response to Pelosi's visit has only hardened perceptions around the threat presented by a Chinese navy that increasingly views the Pacific as its backyard in nations like Japan and Australia. Whatever concerns people may have had about Pelosi's visit, Demetri Sevastopulo wrote in the Financial Times that "the theatrical missile launches and live-fire drills have created a negative effect for Beijing, by generating an increasingly unified chorus of critics."

 

The cards appear to have been dealt with in Taiwan. A significant majority of the island's inhabitants once supported the idea of joining China, drawn in part by the economic benefits of a closer relationship with the developing mainland. However, the majority of Taiwanese are now confident that their future rests on a different, more democratic road, with only 6% of those recently questioned favoring unification with China.

Xi has staked his legacy, ideally peacefully, in part on his capacity to bring about reunion. However, hard power might be the only way to get there. Wu Jieh-min, a political scientist at Taiwan's Academia Sinica, told the New York Times that "the allure of the carrots in China's Taiwan policy — economic inducements — has now plummeted to its lowest point since the end of the Cold War." "The card it currently holds is to gradually escalate military threats against Taiwan and to maintain military readiness for the use of force until, one day, a full-scale military offensive on Taiwan becomes a viable option," the author writes.