US Parliamentarian Nancy Pelosi’s planned visit to Taiwan is highly explosive and could lead to an armed conflict between China and the US. Beijing’s ruler Xi Jinping has warned Washington: Whoever plays with fire will get burned.
US President Joe Biden and Chinese ruler Xi Jinping have had their fifth digital date. Tensions had arisen between the two countries in the run-up to the planned visit by US MP Nancy Pelosi. Chinese state media have propagated that the trip of the Speaker of the House of Representatives, comparable to the President of the Bundestag, could result in a military escalation in the Taiwan Strait.
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Chinese leader Xi has repeatedly threatened to take over and occupy neighboring Taiwan, one of the world’s best-functioning democracies. Beijing claims the island belongs to China. In fact, the Chinese Communist Party has never had any control or sovereignty over the country. Conversely, it becomes a shoe: Today, the People’s Republic has territorial conflicts with all of its neighbors, which can escalate militarily at any time. And in all these conflicts that Beijing has started, the Communist Party claims that foreign countries are occupying their territory.
Intoxicated by his country’s economic success, Xi has invested large sums in expanding the military. For several years he has been underlining China’s interest in becoming the number one imperialist colonial power with threats of violence against its neighbors. Chinese mercenaries have even been occupying islands belonging to the Philippines for over a year. Fighter jets are constantly invading Taiwanese airspace. Before the virtual meeting with US President Biden, various voices in China put it on the record that those same fighter jets could force Ms. Pelosi’s military plane to land. Such an undoubtedly dangerous situation could result in a war between the United States and the People’s Republic of China.
Alexander Görlach is a Senior Fellow at the Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs in New York. The PhD linguist and theologian teaches democratic theory in Germany, Austria and Spain as an honorary professor at Leuphana University. In the 2017-18 academic year, he was at National Taiwan University and City University Hong Kong to conduct research on China’s rise. He is currently researching new technologies at the University of Oxford’s Internet Institute and how they are used in democracies and abused in dictatorships.
President Xi also addressed the United States on the subject of Taiwan: Those who played with fire would get burned. In fact, the Beijing dictator might have an interest in such a war: the economy is bad, the middle class, which Xi wants to reduce with his new policy of “common prosperity” and bring it under more control, is losing their homes, purchasing power and their children discharged from the university into unemployment. At 18.4 percent, youth unemployment in Xi’s empire is at its highest level in a long time.
The banking and real estate sector is in crisis, many players are broke. Xi will bring both industries under full state control with bailouts. In such a situation, a war with Taiwan could serve to unite the people behind them and, should they no longer want that (since the failed Covid policy in Shanghai there have been more and more protests in the country), put them under martial law and in this way to nip every little protest in the bud.
The assertion that neither the USA nor the People’s Republic have an interest in a war therefore does not support the Chinese side. Should Xi follow the calculus outlined here, he would in any case get rid of the numerous problems that are currently piling up between him and a third term as president. Actually, China’s supreme commanders are only allowed to rule for ten years. Like other dictators, Xi has abolished every limit and proclaimed himself ruler for life.
Well-known points of view were exchanged during the talk between Biden and Xi. However, everything depends on whether Ms. Pelosi will really travel to Taiwan. A stop in the country is planned on a larger-scale trip to Asia by the politician. Shortly after the announcement of the travel plans, the US Army announced that it did not think staying in Taiwan was a good idea. At almost the same time, CIA chief William Burns stated at a security conference in Aspen that the threat to Taiwan from China was serious. And one of the top US military officials underpinned this statement during a visit to Indonesia: China is acting more aggressively and violently throughout the western Pacific than before.
Should Pelosi’s trip not take place, Republicans will capitalize on it and campaign for the mid-terms to portray Mr. Biden and the Democrats as appeasers. If the White House now caves in, Xi could also start howling triumphantly. The only possibility would be that the 82-year-old Pelosi pretends to be ill and cancels her entire trip to Asia. In all other scenarios, a military escalation in August is very likely.
