China’s near-term response to House speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan may not yet be concluded, but its main outlines are clear: significant increases in “wolf-warrior diplomacy” rhetoric; significant military exercises in and around Taiwan’s territorial waters; and suspension or cancellation of several channels of Sino–U.S. diplomatic discourse. More might be coming, but what Beijing has done so far is neither unexpected nor game-changing.
What could be game-changing is whether China’s temper tantrum awakens American business and political leaders to realities that have been steadily accumulating even before Xi Jinping took power. In the last decade, Xi and others unambiguously abandoned Deng Xiaoping’s disingenuous, low-profile approach of “hide your strengths, bide your time.” Xi said expressly, “A military force is built to fight. Our military must regard combat readiness as the goal for all its work and focus on how to win when it is called upon.”
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