TAIPEI —
US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi landed in Taiwan on Tuesday evening, defying a
string of increasingly stark warnings and threats from China that have sent
tensions between the world’s two superpowers soaring.
اضافة اعلان
Pelosi, second in
line to the presidency, is the highest profile elected US official to visit
Taiwan in 25 years and Beijing has made clear that it regards her presence as a
major provocation, setting the region on edge.
Live broadcasts
showed the 82-year-old lawmaker, who flew on a US military aircraft, being
greeted at Taipei’s Songshan Airport by foreign minister Joseph Wu.
“Our delegation’s
visit to
Taiwan honors America’s unwavering commitment to supporting Taiwan’s
vibrant democracy,” Pelosi’s official Twitter account tweeted moments after she
arrived.
She added her visit
“in no way contradicts” US policy towards Taiwan and Beijing.
Pelosi is currently
on a tour of Asia and while neither she nor her office confirmed the Taipei
visit, multiple US and Taiwanese media outlets reported it was on the cards —
triggering days of building anger from Beijing.
The Chinese
military said it was on “high alert” and would “launch a series of targeted
military actions in response” to the visit.
“Those who play
with fire will perish by it,” Beijing’s foreign ministry added.
No
need for ‘crisis’
China considers self-ruled,
democratic Taiwan as its territory and has
vowed to one day seize the island, by force if necessary.
It tries to keep
Taiwan isolated on the world stage and opposes countries having official
exchanges with Taipei.
In a call with
US President Joe Biden last week, Chinese President Xi Jinping warned Washington
against “playing with fire” on Taiwan.
While the Biden
administration is understood to be opposed to a Taiwan stop, White House
National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said Pelosi was entitled to go
where she pleased.
“There is no reason
for Beijing to turn a potential visit consistent with longstanding US policies
into some sort of crisis,” he told reporters.
The last House
Speaker to visit Taiwan was Newt Gingrich in 1997.
Kirby reiterated
that US policy was unchanged toward Taiwan.
This means support
for its self-ruling government, while diplomatically recognizing Beijing over
Taipei and opposing a formal independence declaration by Taiwan or a forceful
takeover by China.
Moscow said it was
“absolutely in solidarity with China”, calling the prospect of a Pelosi visit
“pure provocation”.
As Pelosi’s plane
neared Taipei Chinese state media said advanced Su-35 fighter jets were
crossing the Taiwan Strait. The brief report had no details on timing or
precise location of the crossing.
Taiwan’s military
later released a statement denying that any Su-35s had crossed the Taiwan
Strait.
All
eyes on Taiwan
Pelosi left Kuala Lumpur
Tuesday after meeting Malaysian Prime Minister Ismail Sabri and Foreign
Minister Saifuddin Abdullah.
So many people were tracking the US military plane
ferrying her on FlightRadar that the website said some users experienced
outages.
The plane took a circuitous route that studiously
avoided the South China Sea — which Beijing claims — before heading up the east
coast of the Philippines.
Press access around Pelosi has been tightly
restricted and limited to a handful or short statements confirming meetings
with officials.
Her itinerary includes stops in South Korea and
Japan — but the prospect of a Taiwan trip had dominated attention.
Before her arrival, Taipei’s government had stayed
silent on whether she would visit even as local media published reports showing
her presence was all but guaranteed.
‘Seek to punish Taiwan’
Taiwan’s 23 million people have long lived with the possibility of an
invasion, but that threat has intensified under
Xi, China’s most assertive
ruler in a generation.
“Beijing shouldn’t
get to decide who can visit Taiwan or how the US should interact with Taiwan,”
Wang Ting-yu, a lawmaker from the ruling Democratic Progressive Party, told AFP
ahead of the visit.
“I think China’s
open intimidation is counter-effective.”
Bonnie Glaser,
director of the Asia program at the US-based German Marshall Fund think tank,
said the probability of Beijing choosing war was “low”.
“But the
probability that ... (China) will take a series of military, economic, and
diplomatic actions to show strength and resolve is not insignificant,” she
wrote on Twitter.
Pelosi’s potential
visit has been proceeded by a flurry of military activity across the region
that highlights how combustible the issue of Taiwan is.
Last week both
Taiwan and China held live fire drills.
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