US visit by Taiwan’s President will enrage Beijing

“Sneaky’’. That’s how China views the visit of Taiwan’s President Tsai Ing-wen to the US. So sneaky, in fact, that it’s a provocation deserving of “resolute countermeasures”.

Her trip is hardly under the radar, so Beijing doesn’t mean “sneaky” as in slipping in unnoticed, more that Washington is attempting to normalise such visits as part of a strategy to end its “One China” policy without officially announcing it. Under “One China” the US recognises that the government of the People’s Republic of China is the only government of China.

However, although the US “acknowledges” Beijing’s position that it has sovereignty over Taiwan, it does not “recognise” it. The difference is important and gives Washington the diplomatic wiggle room to engage with Taiwanese leaders.

Tsai is only “passing through” the US on her way to Guatemala this weekend before moving on to Belize and then returning home via Los Angeles. However, it used to be an unspoken diplomatic rule that Taiwanese presidents would not engage in official events while transiting through the US. Tsai has successfully changed that, and this looks like being the most controversial of her six visits since becoming leader in 2016.

The New York leg is merely problematic. Dinner with Taiwanese expats, and a speech at the Hudson Institute think tank, is annoying for Beijing, but a probable meeting with the House Speaker Kevin McCarthy in Los Angeles next week could be explosive.

Chinese spokeswoman Zhu Fenglian called on the US not to let Tsai transit through the country, to prevent US officials from meeting her, and said: “If she contacts US House speaker McCarthy, it will be another provocation that seriously violates the one-China principle, harms China’s sovereignty and territorial integrity, and destroys peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait… We firmly oppose this and will definitely take measures to resolutely fight back.” As Tsai flew out of Taiwan four Chinese navy warships approached the island’s Defence Zone.

Tsai responded saying her visit was “normal” and that “Taiwan will firmly walk on the road of freedom and democracy and go into the world. Although this road is rough, Taiwan is not alone.”

She’s right. Although China has used dollar diplomacy to successfully whittle down the number of countries willing to have formal diplomatic relations with Taiwan, the island does have friends.

It has good trade relations with numerous countries, many of which are themselves nervous about China and sympathetic to the island’s precarious position, among them Japan, the Philippines, and Australia. Paraguay still has diplomatic ties and has resisted what it calls “enormous” pressure to cut them despite Beijing restricting Paraguayan soy and beef imports. April’s presidential election there is worth watching as the opposition candidate may switch support to China if elected. 

After Honduras ended diplomatic relations with Taiwan last week only thirteen countries now formally recognise it. Among them are the two Latin American countries on Tsai’s current itinerary. In Guatemala she will be greeted with full military honours and a state banquet. Belize is also expected to put on the full red-carpet treatment.

And then, midweek, she goes to California where McCarthy is expected to meet her at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library. Last August his predecessor as Speaker, Nancy Pelosi, visited Taiwan, causing the People’s Liberation Army to surround the island for five days of military exercises which included a simulated blockade of its ports and firing missiles over the landmass. China-US military-to- military communications were restricted and climate talks suspended, although some have now resumed.

McCarthy has said he too would like to go to Taiwan. However, he knows that would be met with a similar response, and so no date has been set. The Los Angeles meeting may be an attempt by both McCarthy and Tsai to make a point but one which stops short of triggering that level of crisis.

It’s doubtful the Biden administration has approved the meeting but neither has it yet expressed opposition in the manner it did before the Pelosi trip. It is preparing for a backlash if the meeting goes ahead. McCarthy, unlike Pelosi, is a Republican and so Beijing might accept that the US government is not behind the talks. As the meeting is in the US, China’s response might be less severe, perhaps at the level of hard diplomatic language and sanctions against officials.

However, this will be the first time a House Speaker, second in line to the president, has met a Taiwanese leader on American soil and so another display of military power can’t be ruled out. The chargé d’affaires at the Chinese Embassy in Washington, Xu Xueyuan, said it made no difference if it was Taiwanese leaders “coming to the US or US leaders visiting Taiwan”. Little wonder then that National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan called China’s de facto foreign minister, Wang Yi, to assure him the visit was routine.

Wang Yi was probably not reassured. We wait to see what the “resolute countermeasures” might be.

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