Irish Examiner view: US did not back down from China

US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, left, and Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen gesture during a meeting in Taipei, Taiwan.

The visit by US House speaker Nancy Pelosi to Taiwan this week was predictable in that it was bookended by Chinese anger and belligerence about perceived foreign interference in a territory the Chinese has claimed as its own since 1949.

Beijing had huffed and puffed over Pelosi’s visit and went as far as to advise of “dire consequences” if she did travel, but both sides in this diplomatic sideshow knew that, had she not made the trip, it would have changed the rules of the game.

Had Pelosi not gone to Taipei, a mere diplomatic spat could have brought on a strategic cataclysm which would have further isolated a key US ally and economic partner as an emboldened China looked to war or the surrender — or both — of the Republic of China, as Taiwan has officially been known since the end of the Chinese civil war.

When Dwight D Eisenhower visited Taipei in June 1960, he became the only sitting US president to visit Taiwan. Some 500,000 people turned out to welcome him in what was an emotional visit. On the other side of the Taiwan Strait, the Communist Party’s People’s Liberation Army shelled the Kinmin Islands, a few miles off the mainland, but governed by the Republic of China.

Since then, there have been regular high-profile US visitors. In 1997 the then House speaker, Newt Gingrich, visited Beijing before he went to Taipei and assured the Chinese that America would defend Taiwan if it were attacked. As recently as last April, Republican senator Lindsey Graham led a bipartisan delegation visiting Taiwan and in May, Democratic senator Tammy Duckworth led a congressional delegation and met with Taiwan president Tsai Ing-wen.

None of these visits sparked any sort of crisis, diplomatic or otherwise, which was why it was so important that Pelosi’s visit took place. As China has felt its power rise and sensed America’s was waning, it has tried to rewrite the playbook, just as it did when crushing democracy in Hong Kong.

The US should not and did not back down in the face of such intimidatory tactics.