Imran Khalid :

SO, NANCY Pelosi, the Speaker of US House of Representatives, has embarked upon her much-touted tour of Southeast Asia. Pelosi, number three in the line of US presidential succession, is leading a six-member congressional delegation to Singapore, Malaysia, South Korea and Japan, according to a statement released by her office on Sunday. The statement, however, conspicuously, skipped any mention of Taiwan, after days of intense speculation about a likely stop there that fuelled tensions between Beijing and Washington. On July 28, president Xi Jinping and president Joe Biden had a two hour and 15 minutes long conversation on the phone, which is expected to have a relatively positive impact on the plummeting Sino-US relations that were suddenly ebbing towards new low after the NATO summit in Madrid where China was officially declared as ‘threat and challenge’.

In the wake of the alleged plan of Nancy Pelosi to have a stopover in Taipei during her trip to the region amid the reports that an American aircraft carrier is sailing up towards the South China Sea, the telephonic meeting between the two leaders has assumed unusual importance. Interestingly, with the exception of the simmering tensions in the South China Sea and the controversial US tariffs on the Chinese goods, the two leaders discussed almost all the other contentious topics and expressed their intention to move forward quickly towards early resolution, but the main irking subject of discussion was Taiwan. At the same time, both of them also ‘discussed the value of meeting face-to-face and agreed to have their teams follow up to find a mutually agreeable time to do so’, as per the official statement of the White House. This is perhaps the most positive aspect of the whole episode that there is a mutual will to sit together to resolve the chronic pricking issues that have been stressing their relationship, but also impacting the whole fabric of Indo-Pacific as well as global power structure.

In April, when US secretary of state Anthony Blinken, while addressing the session of the Asia Society at the George Washington University, divulged the basic contours of the Biden administration’s strategic intent towards China, it was evident that there was no major difference in the China policy compared to the Trump administration, however, his tone was visibly not that much stingy and belligerent. The meeting between Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi and Anthony Blinken on the sidelines of the G20 summit in Bali was also conducted in a much more genial atmosphere, which raised the hopes of some constructive engagement between the two sides on less controversial subjects. But president Xi Jinping was extra-ordinarily resolute and assertive on the Taiwan issue during this phone conversation and perhaps used the strongest-ever phrase in diplomatic terminology to warn Biden about the recent American provocations. Xi said, ‘the position of the Chinese government and people on the Taiwan question is consistent, and resolutely safeguarding China’s national sovereignty and territorial integrity is the firm will of the more than 1.4 billion Chinese people. The will of the people cannot be defied and those who play with fire will perish by it’.

Though Biden reassured Xi about strict adherence to the one-China policy, but Chinese leader did not hesitate to openly express his displeasure over the Nancy Pelosi’s rumoured visit to Taiwan. The good thing is that despite such stern warning from president Xi Jinping, the Americans’ reaction was unexpectedly much ‘accommodative’. Asked whether Biden had perceived Xi’s comments as a threat, a senior White House official briefing the media said the Chinese leader ‘used similar language in the conversation that the two leaders had back in November’. She further added she ‘was not going to get into parsing metaphors’. This is rather unusual tranquillity on the part of Washington vis a vis an apparently pugnacious tone of the Chinese leader.

This was the fifth such telephonic communication between the two presidents since Biden took office last year. However, it seems that the Pelosi’s rumoured trip to Taiwan has irked the Chinese leadership to the point where president Xi Jinping had to personally intervene with president Biden on this matter with that much brazenness. She would be the first US house speaker to visit the island since Newt Gingrich in 1997. Beijing’s view is that a trip by Pelosi would be more of a violation of its sovereignty over Taiwan than previous visits to the island by US officials and politicians because she is second in the US presidential line of succession. The Chinese military has already warned it would take counter measures if Pelosi went ahead, and the US military is also reportedly planning to upturn its movement of forces and assets in the Indo-Pacific region. This has all the potential to easily lead to a risk of military conflict.

Actually, the recent reports about the move of the US aircraft carrier towards the Taiwan Strait has heightened the suspicions of the Chinese who are already in irritable mood over Pelosi’s proposed visit to the self-ruled island. Though Pelosi’s visit is being labelled as that of a private citizen, but the Chinese leadership is considering it as a deliberate provocation to test Beijing’s tolerance level. Since 1997, no American of her stature has visited Taiwan, but at that time China was not as much financially and militarily powerful and influential. A flurry of US delegations, consisting of sitting and retired officials and lawmakers, has been regularly visiting Taiwan in the recent years. Naturally that has drawn angry responses from China, but Pelosi’s political stature makes her potential visit extremely provocative to Beijing.

Pelosi is a longstanding critic of the Chinese Communist Party and is considered to be among the fiercest China hawks. She has repeatedly denounced Beijing’s human rights record and met with pro-democracy dissidents and the Dalai Lama, the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader who remains a thorn in the side of the Chinese government. In 1991, Pelosi unfurled a banner in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square to commemorate victims of the 1989 massacre of pro-democracy protesters. More recently, she has voiced support for the 2019 pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong. Her planned trip to Southeast Asia was cancelled in April when she caught Covid-19, but now she is here in the region on the first leg of her tour. A stopover in Taipei would certainly worsen the tumbling relations between Beijing and Washington and escalate tension and uncertainty over the Taiwan Strait. The fifth round of talks between Xi and Biden has enabled the sharing of views. But the resumption of positivity on issues marring the Sino-Us ties now exceedingly depends upon how Biden handles Pelosi’s trip.

Dr Imran Khalid is a freelance contributor from Karachi, Pakistan.