Editorial
US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s trip to China’s “Beautiful Island” is political arson that can be expected to leave Sino-US relations disfigured by burn scars for years to come.
I read an article yesterday morning by Taipei-based former CNN correspondent Mike Chinoy in the online Foreign Policy news magazine about the controversial visit, headlined “What Does Nancy Pelosi Think She’s Doing in Taiwan?”
Like Mike I would like to know her motivation as well. I wonder whether she’s aware of the damage that her high-profile sojourn in Taipei will cause not only to China-US ties, the world’s most consequential relationship, but to global governance. Or perhaps she simply accepts her jaunt’s “collateral damage”.
I agree with Mike, who interviewed me a few times about Macau in the 1990s, that the “risky trip … is a photo-op to enable Pelosi to poke Beijing in the eye as she has done in the past.”
No doubt, the visit is gratuitously provocative.
The 82-year-old Democrat is not a lightweight such as European Parliament Vice-President Nicola Beer who in an apparent folie de grandeur described her visit to Taiwan last month as a “sort of deterrence” to Beijing. Pelosi, known for a penchant of grandstanding, is a heavyweight in US politics, ranking third in the state hierarchy behind President Joe Biden and Vice-President Kamala Harris.
When Republican Newt Gingrich visited Taiwan in his capacity as Speaker of the House in 1997, he represented the opposition as Democrat Bill Clinton occupied the White House. This time both the House Speaker and POTUS are Democrats. Did Biden at least try to talk Pelosi out of the Taiwan outing? Perhaps we will never know.
Biden was given ample advance warning by President Xi Jinping last week. According to Xinhua, Xi warned the US against “playing with fire” about Taiwan.
Well, Biden blithely ignored the warning or was incapable of preventing Pelosi from “playing with fire”.
The upshoot is that Pelosi has become a political firebug. I can’t imagine that a politician as adroit as her didn’t realise the “fiery” impact her Taiwan trip would have.
I have visited the island around half a dozen times in the past few decades. I liked its food, people and landscape. Portuguese seafarers called Taiwan “Ilha Formosa” – “beautiful island”. Their description hit the nail on the head. The island’s Chinese name can be translated as “high-and-flat bay”.
I always noticed during my visits to the island how profoundly Chinese it is in terms of culture, language, traditions and customs, folk belief and, last but not least, its culinary delights.
Mazu is a cross-Strait deity particularly revered in Taiwan, Fujian and Macau.
Foreign Minister Wang Yi commented yesterday that “the US breach of faith on the Taiwan issue is despicable”. His remarks are understandable, considering the three joint communiqués signed by Beijing and Washington between 1972 and 1982 in which the US formally acknowledged that Taiwan belongs to the People’s Republic of China (PRC).
I concur with Mike that the 23 million people of Taiwan will be left to face the consequences of Pelosi’s folly.
It’s a shame that the Sino-US relationship has reached its new nadir – the last thing the world facing an economic trough, the Ukraine conflict, trade sanctions and climate change needs right now.
I surmise that Pelosi’s ill-advised trip is part of the wave of anti-China hysteria that is sweeping the West. Sinophobia has become an obsession among certain Western politicians and it has, I fear, racist connotations – subliminal or inadvertent in a best-case scenario. Accusing “the Chinese” of “stealing” and “cheating” is an eerie reminder of what happened to our Jewish and Black friends in the not-too-distant past.
Once the dust has settled, China-US relations need a reset – the whole world would benefit from it. For this to be possible, the US and its allies must accept once and for all that Taiwan is China’s internal matter. That’s the red line that must not be crossed. Period.
The historic handshake between Xi and Taiwan’s then leader Ma Ying-jeou in Singapore on November 7, 2015 proved that without external interference cross-Strait détente is possible*.
– Harald Brüning
* Our newspaper published a special Sunday edition on November 8, 2015 about the Xi-Ma meeting, headlined “Historic handshake promotes cross-Strait peace”.
