The Speaker of the United States House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosiarrived in Taiwan on Tuesday on an unannounced visit that exacerbated tensions between his country and Chinawho values the trip as a provocation, to which he responded by showing military muscle and imposing sanctions on imports from the island that he considers his own territory.
(Read here: The US says it is prepared for China’s response to Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan)
The visit shows the “unconditional support” of the United States to the island, although “it does not contradict” Washington’s policy towards China, as explained by Pelosi’s cabinet, which belongs to President Joe Biden’s party. The Taiwanese Foreign Ministry also assured that the visit shows Washington’s “solid” support for the island of 23 million inhabitants.
(See also: Who is Nancy Pelosi, the American politician who challenges China?)
For its part, China, which considers Taiwan a rogue province, said the United States is carrying out “extremely dangerous” actions and threatened retaliation.
In fact, Beijing summoned the Washington ambassador and expressed its “strong protest” at the legislator’s visitsomething they consider a red line that Washington could not cross.
Vice Foreign Minister Xie Feng said “the move is extremely outrageous and the consequences are extremely serious,” according to the Chinese state news agency Xinhua.
“China will not sit idly by,” he added.
The Chinese government announced a series of military exercises and Taiwan reported that there were at least 21 incursions into the Air Defense Identification Zone (Adiz), vaster than a country’s airspace.
“The Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) is on high alert and will launch a series of targeted military actions to (…) defend national sovereignty and territorial integrity and thwart external interference and separatist attempts at ‘independence of Taiwan,'” the Defense Ministry spokesman said in a statement.
The first concrete response of the Asian giant was to prohibit the import of hundreds of Taiwanese food products, while maintaining a military deployment that includes the closure of maritime areas for naval maneuvers in the South China Sea and in the Bohai Sea (north). .
Meanwhile, military authorities in Washington indicated Tuesday that several American warships plied the waters of the Taiwan region.
“The United States does not seek or want a crisis. We are prepared to handle whatever Beijing decides to do,” National Security Council Communications Coordinator John Kirby told a news conference at the White House.
The US official assured that the warnings issued by Beijing in recent hours are “in line” with what the United States had anticipated, and defended that “there is no reason” why the Chinese government uses this trip as a “pretext to increase its military activity” in the region.
China and Taiwan have been separated in fact since 1949, when Mao Zedong’s communist troops defeated the nationalists, who took refuge on the island.
In 1979, the United States recognized the Beijing government as the representative of China.
The United States and almost the entire international community adopt the “one China” policy, which excludes diplomatic relations with the nationalist-governed island. However, the Americans continue to provide military support to Taipei.
In recent years, tensions between the United States and China over the Taiwan issue have been intensifying due to a series of decisions made during the presidency of Donald Trump.
In 2017, the then-president authorized a major US arms sale to Taiwan. Then, in 2019, Chinese President Xi Jinping said he was not going to give up force to take back the island and warned Washington of the risk of “playing with fire” after a new arms sale to the island.
“The Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) is on high alert and will launch a series of targeted military actions to (…) defend national sovereignty
In January 2020, Taiwanese leader Tsai Ing-wen, who was re-elected as leader of that nation, affirmed that Taiwan is “a country”, which caused Xi in October of that same year to ask his army to be “prepared for the war”. The scuffles between Beijing and Washington continued and at the end of July 2022, the Chinese government warned that Pelosi’s visit would have harsh repercussions.
The truth is that Pelosi became this Tuesday the highest-ranking US official to visit Taiwan since her predecessor Newt Gingrich in 1997. Meanwhile, Russia affirmed that China has “the right to take the necessary measures to protect its sovereignty” and considered the Pelosi’s visit as a “provocation”.
This is not the first time that Pelosi has challenged China. In fact, part of his political career has focused on the tense relations between that country and the United States. In 1991, for example, he commemorated the victims of the pro-democracy demonstrations in China in 1989.
Most recently, in 2019, he expressed his support for the pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong.
Wall Street closes in the red and some European stock markets fall
The Wall Street stock market closed this Tuesday in the red and the Dow Jones Industrial Average, its main indicator, lost 1.23 percent amid tensions between China and the United States over Taiwan and after members of the Federal Reserve (Fed ) will bet on continuing to raise interest rates aggressively to combat inflation.
At the end of operations on the New York Stock Exchange, the Dow Jones lost 402.23 points, to 32,396.17, while the selective S&P 500 fell 0.67 percent or 27.44 integers, to 4,091, 19.
The Nasdaq Composite Market Index, meanwhile, fell 0.16 percent or 20.22 units to close at 12,348.76.
The declines were accentuated in the last bars of a stock market session that had already opened in the red, but that for hours had traveled in mixed territory and without major oscillations.
The movements were marked by the visit to Taiwan of the president of the United States House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi, and by a message from the Fed that suddenly cooled expectations that interest rate hikes could be close to run out.
INTERNATIONAL WRITING
*With AFP and Efe
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