Beijing’s bombast over Pelosi Taiwan visit exposes insecurity

Before her arrival China held live-fire drills across the Tawian strait and it was suggested her plane could be shot down.

A US military aircraft with US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on board prepares to land at Sungshan Airport in Taipei on Wednesday. Picture: AFP

China’s tough rhetoric around Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan reveals deep insecurity about Washington’s shifting stance towards the island, analysts say, as well as efforts to distract from economic woes at home.

The 82-year-old House of Representatives speaker landed in Taipei late on Tuesday night, becoming the highest-profile American official to set foot there in 25 years. Before her arrival, China held live-fire drills across the Tawian strait and Hu Xijin, former editor-in-chief of tabloid Global Times, suggested Beijing could “forcibly dispel” her plane or even “shoot them down”.

But analysts told AFP that beneath the bombast, there was insecurity, with China’s rulers threatened by what they perceive as increasing efforts by the US and Western allies to foster relationships with Taiwan and encourage the island’s independence.

At the same time, Chinese President Xi Jinping is anxious to project strength against the US – its greatest military and economic rival – ahead of a key political meeting expected to secure him an unprecedented third term. Last week, Mr Xi warned Joe Biden in a call the US should not “play with fire” when it came to Taiwan.

Nancy Pelosi meets Taiwan's President Tsai Ing-wen at the Presidential Office in Taipei. Picture: AFP

The aggressive message served to reinforce Mr Xi’s domestic image ahead of his expected political coronation at the 20th communist party congress later this year, said Steve Tsang, director of the SOAS China Institute in London.

“As a strongman leader, the last thing he would want to show is any sign of weakness,” Professor Tsang said.

Drumming up nationalist sentiment also serves to distract from China’s slowing economy and growing public impatience with Beijing’s harsh zero-Covid restrictions that have dampened the mood in what would have been a jubilant year for Mr Xi.

“For the Chinese communist party, there are two pillars of legitimacy – economic growth and nationalism,” said Willy Lam, a Hong Kong-based Chinese politics analyst. Headlines and aggressive messaging on Taiwan had been “diverting the attention of the Chinese public away from economic problems”, he said. Beijing’s sabre-rattling stemmed in large part from a perception that US engagement with Taiwan had become more proactive and threatening to the mainland’s interests, said Li Mingjiang of Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University.

Since the Trump administration, some in Beijing believe Washington appears to have become increasingly “supportive of Taiwan independence”, Associate Professor Li said.

Chinese diplomats have complained the US is no longer honouring what it claims is a binding tenet of bilateral relations, the “One China” policy, pointing to arms deals between Washington and Taipei. Visits to Taiwan by politicians from regional neighbours as well as Europe and the US have also increased.

Mr Xi is “getting very impatient and irritated by the fact that in the past year, senior leaders... not just from the US but from Japan, the EU and so forth, have been visiting Taiwan”, Mr Lam said.

At the same time, there is a greater sense of distinctive Taiwanese identity among the younger generation. Combined with the ruling Democratic Progressive Party’s pro-independence agenda, this meant that to Beijing’s elite, “the whole Taiwan issue does not really look positive,” Professor Li said. Chinese leaders were turning to fiery rhetoric to “discourage the development of cross-strait relations and US-Taiwan relations from becoming even more challenging for mainland China”, he said.

Despite all its aggressive posturing, few believe Beijing wants an active military conflict against the US and its allies over Taiwan – just yet. Multiple scholars noted Beijing’s military capabilities still lag behind Washington’s, and told AFP that recent military drills, while clearly intended to be intimidating, fell short of targeting areas immediately adjacent to the Taiwanese coast.

“The last thing Xi wants is an accidental war ignited,” said Titus Chen of the National Sun Yat-Sen University in Taiwan. “Xi’s Plan B would be to explain away, via propaganda and thought-control system, the sense of embarrassment or humiliation that Ms Pelosi’s Taiwan visit brings to Beijing,” Professor Chen said.

AFP