As I wrote recently, I’m no fan of Nancy Pelosi, by a long shot, but I salute her for her ballsy and long-standing pushback against China’s brutality. Where most of the political-media class are running scared of China’s bullying on Taiwan, Pelosi, to her infinite credit, stood up to Beijing’s bullying and made a high-profile visit to the island nation last month.
Of course, when China responded with yet more bluff and bluster, the pearl-clutchers and apologists shrieked that the Bad Drunk Lady had started a war. It was bullshit of course: after puffing its chest and strutting around the airspace over the Taiwan Strait, China has predictably folded like a paper dragon.
And, in Pelosi’s wake, more and more politicians from around the world are discovering their spines.
Late on Thursday evening a US air force plane touched down at Taiwan’s Songshan airport. Unannounced, it attracted a fraction of the fanfare that greeted the plane carrying US speaker Nancy Pelosi three weeks earlier, but was still broadcast live on television. Traveling solo, senator Marsha Blackburn stepped onto the dark tarmac where she was met by a foreign ministry official, and they quickly moved inside the terminal.
“I just landed in Taiwan to send a message to Beijing – we will not be bullied,” Blackburn tweeted.
Blackburn’s visit was the fourth US delegation to Taiwan since Pelosi’s trailblazing effort. Delegations from Japan and Lithuania have also visited. Parliamentarians from the UK, Germany, Denmark, Canada and Australia are also reportedly planning trips to Taipei.
Shortly before his arrival, Keiji Furuya, a member of Japan’s ruling Liberal Democratic party, tweeted: “China’s military provocations and other erratic behaviour pose a risk to the peace and safety of not only Taiwan, but east Asia as a whole.”
Rather than spark a war, so far Pelosi’s visit has done nothing but spark the courage of those previously too gutless to be seen to support a free, liberal democracy threatened by a brutal communist giant.
The run of foreign dignitaries visiting Taiwan has kept attention on the island in the wake of Pelosi’s trip and continued to draw vituperation from Beijing. Taiwan’s government has welcomed them all, grateful for the international support and solidarity against the Chinese government’s threats to annex it by force.
“These warm acts of kindness and firm demonstrations of support have reinforced Taiwan’s determination to defend itself,” said Taiwan’s president, Tsai Ing-wen, at a formal meeting with Blackburn on Friday.
Of course, China ramped up its aggressive posturing.
The Pelosi visit in early August sparked a furious reaction from Beijing, which quickly announced an unprecedented run of live-fire military drills encircling Taiwan’s main island. It targeted Taiwan with missile tests, median line incursions by hundreds of warplanes and ships, disinformation and cyber attacks, and blockade-style interruptions of Taiwanese shipping ports and aerial traffic. Beijing’s moves have created a more hostile “new normal” in the strait, but they have not deterred Taiwan, or its allies.
The Guardian
Yet, China’s drills have stumbled to an end, and there Taiwan still is — with more and more visible support from around the world.
So, here’s a sentence I thought I’d never write: well done, Nancy Pelosi. Well done.
