Beijing vows to ‘fight back’ as Taiwan Teader Tsai visits. But this time it has more to lose

Hong Kong
CNN
–

An expected meeting between the president of Taiwan Tsai Ing-Wen We Speaker Kevin McCarthy in California this week Nancy Pelosi visited Taipei.

At the time, Beijing surrounded the island democracy in unprecedented military drills – firing dozens of missiles at circling warplanes operating on a sensitive median line that divides the Taiwan Strait.

It also cuts off contact with the United States on many issues from military issues to combating climate change, to retaliation for a violation of its sovereignty.

Meanwhile, Beijing has threatened to “definitely fight back” if a Tsai-McCarthy meeting goes ahead.

It also killed Washington for allowing Tsai to stop in the US en route to and from an official visit to Central America, it warned. “Serious” confrontation between the two powers.

art Opposite Tsai Cut off his own land, defeated in his 10-day trip not to allow the “external pressure” that stopped Taiwan from connecting with the world and like-minded democracies.

But the optics of the meeting, which is taking place in California and not Taiwan, and its timing – in a very recent moment in foreign relations with China and Ahead of a presidential election in Taiwan that could reset the tone of its relationship with Beijing – could see Beijing improve this time, or even not improve further, analysts said.

“It puts the burden on China not to overreact, because any overreaction is China’s withdrawal from the world,” said Yun Sun, Director of the China program in Washington.

That doesn’t mean, however, that Beijing won’t be watching Tsai’s movements closely as it calibrates its response — and decides how much military action it can take in its encounter on American soil.

The opacity of the Chinese system – and the potential for vested interests within its vast bureaucracy – also makes it difficult to determine the answer.

“Every time Taiwan does anything China doesn’t like, the Chinese will act with their own military pressure,” Sun said. But in the current situation, “they have to think about the consequences of overreaction,” he added.

The much-anticipated meeting, which McCarthy’s office announced earlier this week would take place on Wednesday, also comes at an important US-China moment.

Washington and Beijing are struggling to strengthen their communication Amidst a flurry of issues from a deflated suspected balloon in China’s Surdenillance to the stakes

Taiwan is still feeling the fallout from that response in August, with Chinese military forces regularly making incursions along what is Beijing and Taipei’s informal border in the Taiwan Strait. The official Taiwan News Center also reported on Monday that Tsai will meet with McCarthy, citing the president’s visit to Tsai.

But a meeting between Tsai and the leader of the majority of Republicans in the US House House of Representatives, is another symbolic moment for Taiwan and the US, which will continue unofficial relations.

For Tsai, who is entering the final year of her two-year presidency, “it’s clearly a CLANTONE event,” according to Wen-Ti Sungista of the Australian National University’s Taiwan University Countries Program. “He has this image as the president of Taiwan who has brought US-Taiwan relations to new heights, and who … has given Taiwan almost unprecedented international visibility,” he said.

That increased visibility – and enhanced cooperation with the US – follows China’s expansion of the island, which sits less than 110 miles (177 kilometers) from the mainland coast.

China’s Communist Party claims its own democratic self-governance on the island as if it were its own before it took control, and has vowed to take the island, by force if necessary.

The Party has made a sweeping increase in its military capabilities over the past decade under leader XI Jinping — and is targeting Taiwan’s economic, diplomatic boom.

That’s driven concerns, among some in Washington, that Beijing is preparing for the invasion, even if China’s official language is still unwilling to achieve the claimed goal of “renewal.”

These pressures – and how to support Taiwan against Beijing’s unilateral actions – are likely to be on the table when Tsai, a group of US lawmakers sit down on Wednesday.

Congress has been a pillar of increasing American support for Taiwan in recent years. The island regularly visits lawmakers and drives Bipartisan legislation that fosters support and cooperation.

While the U.S. cut diplomatic ties decades ago, it maintains unofficial ties with Taiwan and is bound by law to allow itself to defend itself.

Under Washington’s “one China” policy, the US recognizes China’s position that Taiwan is part of China, but has not yet officially recognized Beijing’s claim to the island of 23 million.

Although McCarthy doesn’t have Pelosi’s decades-long record of advocacy on China, the California Republican is now a top check on Beijing, and Tsai has helped burnish that image.

Last month, McCarthy told reporters that Tsai’s visit to the US would not affect whether she would travel to Taiwan in the future – something she has said before.

A meeting in California, on US soil, is widely seen as less likely to provoke Beijing than McCarthy’s visit to Taiwan.

Pelosi’s trip – the first from a lawmaker in that rank on the island in 25 years – made a fever pitch of nationalist and anti-US rhetoric in Mainland China.

At this time, until now, the domestic conversation of the heavily controlled media in the media was obsessed.

But the stakes remain high — including for Beijing itself — on how to respond, analysts say.

As Taiwan prepares for a presidential election in January, a hostile response could push voters away from Taiwan’s main opposition party (KMT), widely seen as more friendly to Beijing.

It can also change another high-profile trip that is happening now: A tour of Mainland China from Taiwan’s first city since the end of the Chanvan War in 1949.

Ma’s trip is a “once in a half chance to send a hand message between the two sides, Beijing doesn’t want to look like that,” said the political analyst.

China is also aware that its actions towards Taiwan are under greater global spotlight following the invasion of Ukraine Vladimir Putin, a close diplomatic XI. Putin’s rhetoric on Ukraine has echoes of how XI spoke about Taiwan.

Beijing has recently positioned itself as an agent of peace in that conflict – particularly as it seeks to mend fragile relations with Europe.

This week, while Tsai is expected to meet with McCarthy, French president Emmanuel Macron and European Commission Aryen will go to China – an important opportunity that Ersula does not want to post in the military.

An aggressive response also risks facing the US, less than six months after Xi and US President Joe Biden to promote face-to-face communication.

“(A less aggressive response) means Beijing doesn’t want to escalate tensions with the US to a level that gets out of hand,” said Steve Tsang of the London-based Store Institute.

“A reset of US-China Ties is not on the agenda, but defusing tensions is not beyond the realm of possibility.”