Nancy Pelosi’s trip to Taiwan this week was met with a series of provocative moves from China, including military drills, deeper incursions into the island’s airspace and trade bans on some food and sand.
There are signs that Beijing may continue to escalate its response, including reports of even more missile tests. But the initial fallout, at least, could have been much more serious.
Pelosi’s arrival had prompted speculation about a heavy price to be paid for the visit: Hu Xijin, the former editor-in-chief of the Global Times and one of China’s most prominent nationalist voices, had suggested in a now-deleted tweet that Chinese warplanes could “forcibly dispel Pelosi’s plane.”
China’s Twitter-like Weibo service lit up with netizens in the country who expressed disappointment that their government repeated rhetorical flourishes without adopting harder measures to stop Pelosi’s trip. One of the most popular comments, with close to 100,000 likes, offered one impractical option: “Cancel the Taiwan-friendly policy and strictly prohibit cross-strait trade, making it an isolated island.”
To the relief of mankind, President Xi Jinping hasn’t pulled a page from Vladimir Putin’s playbook and invaded Taiwan. Beijing is in a stronger position than the last major cross-strait crisis in the mid-1990s, but it’s also far from being able to push the US around. While China’s leadership wants to look tough, it doesn’t want to take any steps that could unleash a conflict where there is any doubt about the outcome.
Xi may just not want a fight right now. His country is already grappling with a property crisis and slowing economic growth after more than two years of strict pandemic-control measures. Xi has been focused on eliminating risks ahead of an expected extending of his rule at a party congress later this year, which leaves little appetite for triggering a conflict that could spin out of control.
The US and Taiwan can take away a couple of wins from this week: The House Speaker, who is second in line to the presidency, got to pledge that the US is determined not to abandon Taiwan, while Taiwanese leader Tsai Ing-wen got a powerful show of American support.
But there may still be more to come from China.
In 2012, after Japan nationalized a set of uninhabited islands in the East China Sea, China began regular coast guard patrols in the area that never stopped. And in 2020, after US politicians supported Hong Kong’s pro-democracy protesters, Xi’s government imposed a sweeping national security law that effectively crushed any opposition.
“It’s important for Xi Jinping to respond strongly, but responding strongly and engaging in conflict are two very different things,” said Lev Nachman, assistant professor at National Chengchi University in Taipei. “There’s not going to be any kind of hot conflict because none of the three sides want that.”
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