COLIN CLARK
SYDNEY: The biggest question for America’s treaty allies and close partners in the Indo-Pacific isn’t necessarily what China will do after US Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan, but how each nation will manage their reactions.
Already China has launched ballistic missiles over Taiwan, had ships and planes cross the so-called line of demarcation that marks the de facto border between the two governments and conducted what the official news organization Xinhua described as long-range live fire drills “on an unprecedented scale.”
China, said Xinhua, “flew more than 100 warplanes including fighters and bombers to conduct combat training exercises such as joint reconnaissance, aerial refueling, airspace control, and strikes on ground targets. Over 10 destroyers and frigates from the navy of the theater command conducted joint blockade operations in waters off the Taiwan Island.”
Perhaps the most dangerous strikes involved five Chinese missiles that Japan’s defense minister on Thursday said landed within Japan’s Exclusive Economic Zone, marking the first time a Chinese ballistic missile had done so.
Tokyo lodged a diplomatic protest with Beijing. “This is a grave issue that concerns our country’s national security and the safety of the people,” defense minister Kishi Nobuo told reporters.
The Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said China was acting in accordance with “international law and international practices,” and added the fairly stunning observation that Japan’s EEZ doesn’t exist.
“As for the Exclusive Economic Zone, China and Japan have not carried out maritime delimitation in relevant waters, so there is no such thing as an EEZ of Japan,” Hua told reporters at a daily briefing.
“Over the coming days and months, China will conduct provocative and escalatory exercises that may include [more] live missile fires in Taiwan’s air space. It may try to flip one of the 14 remaining countries that still recognize Taiwan diplomatically. And it will put more economic pressure on Taiwan,” predicts Bonnie Glaser, head of the Asia Program at the German Marshall Fund of the United States. “Beijing will assess the impact of its actions and warnings on the US and Taiwan. If they believe that the message hasn’t been heard and if they don’t see some restraint, I expect they will take more aggressive measures.”
Those more aggressive measures may be beginning, as China today announced it has stopped all communication with regional military commands (which presumably means Indo-Pacific Command), and that meetings between the Chinese and US defense leadership, including on maritime military safety, are canceled. In what may the most significant strategic action, China will not discuss climate change with US officials.
All this rhetoric and exercises are clearly proof that President Xi Jingping was mightily angered by the visit of a senior American politician to Taiwan, one with a long and sometimes colorful history of criticizing China’s government and supporting the democratic government of Taiwan. The United States did not threaten China militarily nor forge new policy. But Pelosi did visit Taiwan during the 95th birthday of the Chinese Communist Party, the supreme sovereign body in China, and while Xi was meeting with his senior colleagues to plan for his coronation as supreme leader for a third term when the National Congress meets later this fall and to address the Asian behemoth’s stumbling economy.
China, of course, can manufacture as much indignation and anger about this single event as it wishes. So the question remains, how should Australia, South Korea, Japan and other US allies and partners in the region best manage the fallout?
An early sign came when the G7 issued an Aug. 4 statement saying they were “concerned by recent and announced threatening actions by the People’s Republic of China, particularly live-fire exercises and economic coercion, which risk unnecessary escalation” in the Pacific region.
“There is no justification to use a visit as pretext for aggressive military activity in the Taiwan Strait. It is normal and routine for legislators from our countries to travel internationally,” read the statement from the foreign ministers of Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the UK, the US and the EU.
Glaser said the G7 foreign ministers’ statement about China “is a good example of steps that the US can take with its allies. US allies and partners will be concerned about China’s military intimidation tactics and will want to see a strong but non-escalatory US response. They all have a stake in the preservation of peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait, and while each country has different interests and circumstances, there are steps each can take to signal that they oppose Chinese use of force against Taiwan.”
However, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi rejected the G7 statement, raising the specter of China’s subjugation at the ends of Japan and a wide array of western powers before World War II: “Today’s China is no longer the China of the 19th century. History should not repeat itself, and it will never repeat itself!”
Notably, Taiwan itself has remained measured in its responses to China’s actions, not rising to give Beijing an excuse for further military adventurism. And while other nations in the region took a tepid stance at first, China’s actions in the last 48 hours have led to increased criticism — although still fairly muted.
While Japan issued its political complaint, it too has not made any dramatic military movements. Australia’s Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese, took a low key approach, calling for everyone to continue to hew to the status quo.
“We live in an era where there‘s strategic competition and increased tension in our region and where China has taken a more aggressive posture in the region,” Albanese acknowledged. “But our position on Taiwan is clear — we don’t want to see any unilateral change to the status quo and we’ll continue to work with partners to promote peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait.”
But Australia stepped up its criticism of China after the missiles landed in Japan’s EEZ. On Friday, Minister for Foreign Affairs Penny Wong said she has expressed her concerns about Beijing’s “deeply” concerning and “destabilizing” actions to her Chinese counterpart on Friday.
“Australia is deeply concerned about the launch of ballistic missiles by China into waters around Taiwan’s coastline,” she said in a Friday statement after she spoke with China’s Wang at the East Asia Summit held in Cambodia. “These exercises are disproportionate and destabilizing. This is a serious matter for the region, including for our close strategic partner, Japan.”
South Korea said very little about Pelosi’s visit to the American treaty ally and she did not mention Taiwan while there.
“Our government’s stance is to maintain close communication with relevant parties… on the basis that peace and stability in the region through dialogue and cooperation are important,” an official from South Korea’s presidential office told reporters on Wednesday. Pelosi left Seoul the next day. She did not meet with South Korean president Yoon Suk-yeol but did have a phone call for 40 minutes. No details were released about the substance of the discussion.
But like Japan and Australia, South Korea issued a stronger statement following China’s recent missile launches, with Foreign Minister Park Jin saying Seoul opposes any efforts to “change the status quo by force” in the region, according to Yonhap.
Which is to say, the democratic nations in the region are taking China’s bluster as just that and not overreacting — a welcome sign for those concerned about a major conflict in the Pacific breaking out as a result of Pelosi’s visit.
Still, while China’s rhetoric may seem overblown, it clearly reflects the views of the highest levels of the party and government. “The level of distrust is the highest it has been in 50 years,” Glaser said. Even though President Joe Biden has told Xi that his administration adheres to the One China Policy and does not support Taiwanese independence, “the Chinese view Pelosi’s visit as belying his words. Both sides have an enormous stake in stopping the downward spiral, and perhaps this will be a wakeup call that they need to do so.”
If the IMF’s prediction that Chinese economic growth will slow to 3.3 percent this year, the smallest in more than 40 years, proves accurate or optimistic, the country’s societal strains may begin to pose a greater threat to the party than the visit of a single American politician to Taiwan.
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