Nancy Pelosi followed through on her reported plans to visit Taiwan, landing Tuesday morning in Taipei. The flight from Singapore, via an official Air Force passenger jet, was not long, but in making the trip, the House speaker ignored President Biden’s warnings and defied the regime in Beijing, which had threatened to shoot her plane out of the sky. Her example is a courageous one.
The histrionics of Communist Party propagandists ahead of the trip, Pelosi apparently surmised, were just that. She arrived safely, and Beijing seems unlikely to do anything to block her departure. Nevertheless, Beijing is preparing a battery of military exercises and missile launches to express its displeasure, potentially sparking another Taiwan Strait crisis. Already, it has imposed trade sanctions on Taiwan, flown more jets relatively close to the island, and announced live-fire trainings set to begin after Pelosi leaves.
Pelosi explained her reasoning for the visit in a Washington Post opinion essay published soon after she arrived at the airport. U.S. support of the country is important not only to “the 23 million people of the island but also to millions of others oppressed and menaced by the PRC,” she wrote, also citing the Chinese Communist Party’s crackdown in Hong Kong, the erasure of Tibetan identity, and the effort to ethnically cleanse the Xinjiang region of Uyghurs and other Turkic peoples.
Pelosi grasps what China appeasers don’t. That, first of all, backing Taiwan begins with high-level, high-profile support of the island to bring visibility to Beijing’s designs on it. Already, her trip is setting the table for another wave of foreign leaders to visit the island. Lithuania’s foreign minister, Gabrielius Landsbergis, tweeted that he’s certain that “other defenders of freedom and democracy” will be making visits soon. What must ultimately follow are serious efforts to secure the island against a future Chinese attack, when, heretofore, the political willpower has been lacking.
Importantly, Pelosi also clearly understands that the party’s imperial project is a multifaceted and intertwined one. Party-state officials test new technologies for use in their Uyghur genocide and their colonization of Tibet, which can then be used in other contexts across China and the world to shut down dissent. The tactics that the party’s united-front networks used to infiltrate Hong Kong and soften the city’s political system are likewise similar to the methods it is deploying in Taiwan. Exposing and dismantling malign CCP propaganda and influence efforts — and standing with Beijing’s victims and targets — is an essential project.
Those propaganda efforts have influenced the debate surrounding Pelosi’s trip. Above all else, the party has emphasized that Pelosi’s visit is a “provocation” and one that it is within its rights to respond to forcefully. It has also tried to portray the trip as a departure from Washington’s longstanding “One China” policy, according to which the U.S. agrees not to support Taiwan’s independence.
As a result, far too many people have accepted the premise that the House speaker is responsible for heightening tensions in the region, rather than placing blame squarely where it belongs — on Beijing. While there was, prior to her arrival in Taipei, a legitimate debate about the timing of her trip, that window has since closed. Only Beijing is at fault for a gross overreaction to an American lawmaker exercising her prerogative to travel as she sees fit to a country where she is more than welcome. Washington’s policy has remained unchanged, and members of Congress visit Taiwan all the time. Former speaker Newt Gingrich made his own trip in 1997 while he was still in office.
Regardless, Pelosi’s departure will begin a tricky new phase of Washington’s efforts to deter a potential Chinese invasion of Taiwan. China has pledged a forceful, if wholly unjustified, response. Whatever its misgivings about Pelosi’s itinerary, the White House must work to deter any Chinese reaction that veers into threatening Taiwan’s territorial waters and airspace.
More broadly, Pelosi will have squandered her efforts if, when she returns to Washington, she does not get to work on a battery of counter-CCP legislation to boost U.S. efforts to arm Taiwan, punish Beijing’s human-rights atrocities, and unwind America’s inexplicable economic dependence on China. For all her excellent work in promoting Chinese human rights since the Tiananmen Square massacre, she has not sufficiently prioritized the China threat during her time as speaker. To take one example, House Foreign Affairs Committee chairman Gregory Meeks, who is with Pelosi in Taiwan now, has actively fought off sharp-edged legislation to counter the CCP’s political-influence networks. House Democrats also watered down the recently passed industrial-policy bill that had begun as a counter-CCP package.
By precipitating Beijing’s overreaction, Pelosi has created a new opportunity for Taiwan’s friends to take decisive action against the CCP. It should not be wasted.