China is allegedly threatening military and strategic repercussions for the island country over which Beijing is becoming more antagonistic if the US permits House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to travel there as scheduled next month.
Pelosi, a Democrat from California, hasn’t officially confirmed the trip, but the Financial Times revealed the intentions using sources who asked to remain anonymous. Zhao Lijian, a spokeswoman for the Chinese Foreign Ministry, denounced the article on Tuesday, telling reporters that Beijing views it as a significant breach of the series of diplomatic pacts that control ties between China and the United States with regard to Taiwan.
The heated argument occurs at a time when Fortress Taiwan, as the Pentagon’s war planners call the island country, is facing possibly unparalleled challenges.
According to many U.S. officials, China’s intentions for a comparable territorial land grab have been inspired by Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine and the Western response’s relative restraint.
Tuesday, China sent a message that Pelosi’s alleged intentions necessitate both a diplomatic and a military reaction, using confrontational language to suggest how it may react to the perceived provocation.
The trip would be an intentional provocation on the part of the U.S., according to local analysts cited by the English-language newspaper affiliated with the Chinese Communist Party’s Global Times. This provocation would be made even more egregious by the Biden administration’s plans to send $108 million in new arms shipments to Taiwan.
According to Lü Xiang from the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, if the U.S. breaches the diplomatic boundaries that control Taiwan policy, as Pelosi’s visit would, “we will see the China-US relations fall off a cliff, for sure.”
As Beijing’s military has done in response to previous perceived slights, Hu Xijin, a commentator and former editor for the paper, suggested that the People’s Liberation Army, or PLA, the name given to China’s entire military, deploy an aircraft carrier and fly fighter jets through airspace Taiwan claims as its own in response to a visit from Pelosi.
After testing positive for COVID-19, Pelosi abruptly scrapped her intentions to head a bipartisan group to Taiwan in April. Chinese officials at the time voiced comparable fury in Beijing and Washington. According to the analysts quoted by the Global Times on Tuesday, Pelosi canceled for covert purposes. They did this by pointing to a number of diplomatic and military actions that ensured the crisis was averted in April.
