The decision of Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) to visit Taiwan will almost certain bring “Chinese action against the American homeland,” an expert on China policy forecasted.
Pelosi defied pressure from the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and the Biden administration to visit the imperiled island on Tuesday. Pelosi also met with the first female president of Taiwan, Tsai Ing-wen, allowing a live video feed to beam their tête-à-tête around the world. Pelosi became the highest-ranking U.S. official to visit the island since her predecessor, Speaker Newt Gingrich, visited the island in 1997.
Under the CCP’s “One China” principle, CCP officials see Taiwan not as an independent island nation that broke away from the communist behemoth, but as a rogue province under communist control. Anything legitimizing Taiwan’s claims of independence undercut its official irredentist policy. As such, CCP authorities warned that Pelosi’s visit would bring sharp recriminations.
The Chinese communist government will launch “further attacks on Taiwan,” even though they would be “stiffening the resolve of Taiwan’s people,” China expert Gordon Chang told “Washington Watch with Tony Perkins” on Monday. “I expect it. Beijing can be very counterproductive in what it does.”
“But they will also go after us,” he warned, “because if they don’t go after us, then it signals to the Biden administration that their approach to China has been wrong all along, and that they can actually take tougher action. Beijing does not want that lesson going to the president of the United States, so we will see some form of Chinese action against the American homeland.”
The Biden administration signaled that it opposed the flight. Pelosi, whose San Francisco district contains a large concentration of Chinese Americans, has been a forceful advocate for human rights in China for decades.
Pelosi acted rightly in ignoring Biden, despite the likely Chinese response, Chang said. “If she didn’t go, she would have been emboldening and legitimizing the worst elements in the Chinese political system by showing everybody else that intimidation tactics work,” Chang told Family Research Council President Tony Perkins.
Chinese communist officials “made this a test of political wills. They upped the rhetoric. And clearly they’ve now got to do something,” Chang stated. “We should expect some sort of form of retaliation.”
Chinese attacks would not so much represent a new phenomenon as an intensified one. “We get hundreds of thousands of” cyberattacks from China every day. “The question is, are they going to up those attacks and turn off our lights? That’s a possibility,” Chang said. “We’ve got to remember that we have networks which are relatively undefended. And the outrage here is not that China is trying to attack us,” Chang told Perkins. “The outrage here, Tony, is that we’ve had presidents who’ve known about these attacks — who’ve had the means to do something about them — and who have failed to do something.”
Chang analyzed the likelihood of Chinese President Xi Jinping launching a military strike on Taiwan, saying the timing remains months off. “I don’t think he has the consensus at the top of the Communist Party to do anything,” Chang said. But the strike could occur after Xi — whom analysts accuse of neo-Maoist tendencies — receives an unprecedented third term as president of the world’s most populous nation.
“If he gets that third term, which most everybody says will happen, then I think we will see something occur, largely because they don’t think the Biden administration will stop them,” Chang concluded. “Jinping has based his legitimacy on taking Taiwan. So something horrible will happen.”
Ben Johnson is senior reporter and editor at The Washington Stand.
