Front Burner - Tension in Taiwan as China reacts to U.S. visit

Episode Date: August 4, 2022

U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s trip to Taiwan may have been brief, but it wasn’t short on controversy. She's the most senior U.S. official to visit Taiwan in decades — but many worry her visit will fan the flames of an already tense relationship between the self-governed island and China, which claims Taiwan as its territory and opposes any engagement by Taiwanese officials with foreign governments. Ahead of Pelosi's visit, China ramped up military drills near Taiwan, and Beijing has vowed to hold even more military exercises over the next several days. Some experts are calling it the most hazardous escalation between the two regions since the 1990s. Today Christian Shepherd, a Washington Post correspondent based in Taipei, explains how tensions between China and Taiwan got to this point, and why Pelosi’s visit was so controversial.

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U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's trip to Taiwan may have been brief. She arrived late Tuesday night and flew out Wednesday evening, but it wasn't short on controversy. She's the most senior U.S. official to visit the self-ruled island, claimed by China, in years. And many worry her visit will fan the flames of an already pretty tense relationship. Chinese President Xi Jinping on Thursday warned U.S. President Joe Biden against playing with fire over Taiwan. Chinese state media quoted Xi as telling Biden, quote,

those who play with fire will only get burnt. Ahead of Pelosi's visit, China amped up military drills near Taiwan. Taiwanese government websites were also hit by cyberatt attacks, although the perpetrators are unknown. And in another apparent hack, screens at 7-elevens across the island displayed messages calling Pelosi a warmonger. Now, over the next several days China has vowed to hold even more provocative military exercises, which some experts are calling the most hazardous escalation between the two since the 90s. Today, I'm speaking to Christian Shepard, a Washington Post correspondent based in Taipei, about how tensions between China and Taiwan got to this point,

and why Pelosi's visit was so controversial. Hi, Christian. Thanks so much for joining us. Hi, it's great to be here. So before we even get into Nancy Pelosi's visit, I want to back up a fair bit so we can kind of set the stage for our listeners to understand why Pelosi's visit was such a big deal and why so many people have been concerned by it. So I want to start with a question that may sound simple, but it's really not. What is Taiwan? Is it an independent country, a part of China? Well, the answer to that question will really depend a lot on who you ask. Of course, I'm sure most people will know that for Beijing, Taiwan is considered a part of its territory that is occupied. But for the government of Taiwan, of the Taiwanese people, it is an independent country. And in terms of how it operates,

it operates very much de facto as an independent country, even if no formal independence has been declared. And the reason it's in this strange situation really goes back to the end of the Chinese Civil War in 1949, when the nationalist Kuomintang lost to the Communist Party. Nationalist Kuomintang lost to the Communist Party, they took the one thing that the Communist Party didn't have, which was a navy, and they retreated to Taiwan. Now, of course, over time, the Chinese Communist Party has built up a formidable navy, and it now uses that to threaten Taiwan and to try and force it to, as Beijing says, reunify with China. And Christian, how many countries currently recognize Taiwan as an independent nation? And how does the international community treat Taiwan? Well, there's only a handful of countries that recognize Taiwan.

It really changes almost by the year with a campaign from Beijing to try and steal Taiwan's diplomatic allies. I think we're now down to about a dozen. And Beijing has increasingly blocked Taiwan from the World Health Assembly, from various United Nations platforms. This is all part of Beijing's campaign to try and force its sovereignty claims on Taiwan. Right. So I'll just note that some of the allies on this dwindling list are countries like Belize, Haiti, Tuvalu, not exactly heavy hitters on the international scene. But based on know, based on the history you've just outlined for us, relations between China and Taiwan have never been particularly warm. But how has Taiwan's approach to China changed under the current president Tsai Ing-wen and her

party, the Democratic Progressive Party, compared to the approach of the Kuomintang party, who was in power before her? Traditionally, they have been more pro-independence. But these days, the official stance of the party isn't to call for independence. It's rather to do what is called maintaining the status quo, which is that Taiwan will not push to be legally separated from China. It won't try and antagonize China. It's open to communication, to dialogue, to trade, to exchanges. The reality and what it is now is that we are already a functionally independent country.

We have our own government and we have our own election. But what the Tai-Ing-Wan government will not do that angers China so much is it won't recognise a deal that was done between Beijing and the Kuomintang, which essentially said we both want to be part of one China, we just disagree over who should rule that China. And the DPP really wants to move beyond that. They don't think it's a good basis for the relationship. And because of that, China is very angry about the way that Taiwan rules. There's also one other thing I should mention, which is that Taiwan has really pushed for Taiwan to be more of an international player to try and bolster its unofficial relationships and to strengthen them.

Senior government officials announced a breakthrough in economic ties with Washington on Wednesday, the US-Taiwan Initiative on 21st Century Trade. The initiative launches talks on topics ranging from facilitating trade to fighting corruption. If the two sides agree on a decision, they can sign a formal agreement. And that sort of trend of increasing diplomatic exchanges in particular has been something that has angered China in recent years. Christian, earlier you were talking about Taiwan's official and unofficial allies. And under President Tsai, especially recently, we've seen a big increase in the number of visits from high level foreign dignitaries from a bunch of different countries. Why are we seeing this kind of big

increase in visits? Well, part of it has been President Taiwan's own desire to raise the international profile of Taiwan. But it's also come from sort of a global recognition that autocracy is in ascendance. I think the war in Ukraine has really brought that into focus. And so we've really seen a big ramp up of these often lawmaker delegations almost once a week or once every two weeks, at least. There will be someone who's coming through town and the visit of nancy pelosi in some ways is it's kind of the natural result of that building trend all right and and so that brings us to nancy pelosi's visit uh what has she said about why she went to taiwan um so she's's very much emphasizing that this was a visit to show support for Taiwan as a democracy.

Our solidarity with you is more important than ever as you defend Taiwan and your freedom. In our bilateral meeting, we discussed key opportunities to deepen our partnership, upholding democracy and human rights and respect for the individual. To support its high-tech industries. And in recognition of our common interests economically, we just passed the Chips and Science Act. This is something that opens the door for us to, again, have better economic exchanges. Later on, during a question and answer session with journalists, she was asked about China and whether or not she was hoping this visit would help to bring about more democratic change in China. to bring about more democratic change in China. And again, she framed her response as being really about trying to strengthen democracy. We have to show the world,

and that's one of the purposes of our trip, to show the world the success of the people of Taiwan, their courage to change their own country to become more democratic. And kind of pitting it against rising authoritarianism globally with China and also with Hong Kong being examples of that, that Taiwan is something of a bulwark against. Aside from meeting Tai, she also had a meeting with an executive from the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company. So this is the largest producer of microchips in the world, extremely important to the global technology supply chains. And then she also went to a human rights museum. And at the same time that she was visiting that museum, she also met with some Chinese exile dissidents,

you know, speaking to them about the right situation, both in Taiwan and in China, drawing something of a contrast between the two. And so this is like the symbolism of these two events are really, really quite striking, if I understand correctly. Yeah, absolutely. I think you can say really that in general, this is a visit of symbolism, perhaps far more than it is of substance. And in fact, that has been one of the repeated criticisms, both from people in Taiwan and

in the United States. You know, she didn't come here to sort of discuss trade agreements or dealing with Chinese military threats or whatever it might have been. It was really just a show of support, but it was a substantial one. You know, she's been a consistent critic of China. And so for her to make this visit now at a time when Taiwan's under pressure and is also trying to gain international recognition, it really does send a fairly strong signal. Now, Pelosi is, of course, the Democratic Speaker of the House, but there are lots of Democrats who aren't necessarily on board with this visit,

including apparently the Biden White House. Can you tell me about that? Why are there such tensions within the Democratic Party about this visit? Certainly, there were even some public statements from the White House. Biden, initially being asked about the visit, said that the military thinks it's not a good idea right now. I think there's a number of reasons why people have been concerned, in part just that the US-China relationship is not at a good point. In fact, it's probably at its worst point since relations were established. And also, you know, there's a lot of US attention, including from the US military, is now focused on Ukraine and repelling Russia. So, you know, this isn't really the time you want to be dealing with another crisis

halfway across the world. The White House did say consistently that it was up to House Speaker Pelosi to make the decision. And then if she decided to go, as she obviously did, then they would facilitate that. Now, beyond people in the US government, what concerns have other experts in the US raised about the potential impacts of this visit? Well, I think the real fear is that this won't just be a 24-hour bout of saber-rattling from China, but will rather set off a series of events, a chain reaction that could massively damage both the relationship between China and the US, but also regional security. And we're already starting to see a bit of that playing out. Bans on imports of Taiwanese goods into China, live fire drills, which will take place all around Taiwan, including within 12

nautical miles of the coast. So sort of technically within Taiwanese waters, which is even more escalatory than during the 1990s Taiwan Straits crisis. There's also a lot of room for this potentially to do damage to the Taiwanese economy. Let's pause for a second here and kind of focus on these live fire drills. Tell me a little bit more about them and to what extent there's a potential here for a real escalation. These are pretty substantial. There's six areas that they've announced as exclusion zones, which normally, you know, would be filled with fishing boats and various other vessels.

So, you know, there's a risk of an accident, certainly. We're also not sure exactly what's going to be done there. They're going to be flying fighter jets around those areas. Will they be firing missiles into them? But the initial signs are that China is more concerned about making a show of force than it is about really doing some You're, of course, in Taiwan. I'm wondering how the visit is being seen there, both by security experts and also by the people themselves. Yeah, it's been interesting to kind of cover this as a journalist based here, this as a journalist based here because when the visit was first reported on, it seemed like there was much more interest in Washington than there was in Taipei. And at the same time, there's quite a lot of sort of pride in the idea that a high-ranking U.S. politician can come and that

she should be able to come. There were welcome signs on Taipei 101, the sort of famous skyscraper. And there was also, you know, quite a lot of people going to the airport to watch her plane come in, going to her hotel. There were some concerns, some who thought that this was a dangerous visit. As Pelosi's convoy arrived at her Taipei hotel, a heavy police presence, two groups of protesters gathered outside. Some welcome Pelosi's support for Taiwan. Others accuse her of escalating tensions. Right now, Pelosi and the United States are treating Taiwan as a chess piece. Once she lands in Taiwan,

mainland China will retaliate using their own methods. But for the most part, people were quite positive. And I think that's in part because people here are very used to Chinese threats. Particularly in recent years, um you know particularly in recent years um they just are so common now that people tend to ignore them to some extent and to recognize that china also you know it's it's to some extent rational it's not really going to risk its its reputation or do anything too sudden. Interesting. So it seems kind of like people were more worried in the US about potential escalation than people in Taiwan, based on what you're saying. Yeah, I think that broadly is the case.

But I think there's a thought that it really does kind of demonstrate that Taiwan isn't isolated despite Beijing's efforts. on CBC Gem, brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization, empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. Hi, it's Ramit Sethi here. You may have seen my money show on Netflix. I've been talking about money for 20 years. I've talked to millions of people and I have some startling numbers to share with you. Did you know that of the people I speak to, 50% of them do not know their own household income. That's not a typo. 50%. That's because money is confusing. In my new book and podcast, Money for Couples, I help you and your partner create a financial vision together. To listen to this podcast, just search for Money for Couples. Just finally, Krishna, I want to talk about how this visit might look from the Chinese government's perspective, why they might be reacting this way.

Because over the past few years, the U.S. military has been involved in a number of activities that the Chinese government has viewed as threatening. Am I right? Yeah, China is very concerned at the moment about Taiwan. It's partly to do with the US military, but I think it's more to do with a broader shift in the US approach to Taiwan, which is that essentially the US has started to be more active in its relationship, its unofficial relationship. And what China accuses the US of doing is hollowing out the one China policy, which was this agreement made all the way back in the 70s, when the US switched recognition from the Republic of China, Taiwan's official name, to the People's Republic of China, which essentially allowed the US to kind of sit on the fence. So it would say,

look, we understand that you, the Communist Party of China, think that Taiwan is part of your territory. You know, we acknowledge that, but we don't endorse it. We're also not going to challenge it. And we're going to have an unofficial relationship with Taiwan, but we're not going to tell you when we would offend them. So it was this kind of bizarre bit of diplomatic smoke and mirrors, really, that would allow what they call strategic ambiguity. China feels that the US is changing away from that, that it's essentially moving towards what would be a clear declaration of support. And even in saying that the US would defend Taiwan militarily if China attacked. And President Biden has been asked that a number of times and he's always said yes are you willing to get involved militarily to defend taiwan if it comes to that yes you are that's a commitment we made we are not look here's

the situation we agree with the one china policy we signed on to it and all the attendant agreements made from there but the idea that that it can be taken by force, just taken by force, is just not appropriate. It would dislocate the entire region and be another action similar to what happened in Ukraine. Which is a strange thing to say, given the nature of the one China policy would require him to be ambiguous on that front. And maybe it's worth remembering that in the past few years, the U.S. has sailed a number of warships through the Taiwan Strait, which separates Taiwan and China. Multiple media outlets reported last year that U.S. special forces were secretly training Taiwanese troops.

There were reports, too, that the U.S. had previously landed senior officials on Taiwanese soil using military planes. What is the cumulative effect of all these actions? So a lot of these things are arguably within a sort of a range of kind of military maneuvers that the US has continuously done for a long time. What's shifted is the degree to which they are openly discussed by both the US and by Taiwan, particularly the example you gave of US troops in Taiwan to train. That's something that had been going on for a long time. It was just, for a long time, it was kept very quiet. You didn't really talk about it, and that allowed for China not to get upset about it,

and for US to kind of say that it wasn't too involved directly with Taiwan's defense. But more recently, as part of this kind of push for openness and various ways of trying to show support, more of these things have been advertised. And that has created something of an echo chamber effect. If you advertise every time there's a warship going through the Taiwanese Strait, well, then China feels the need to respond. And so it does kind of create this cycle. And I think that's been a lot of what has kind of led to greater anger from China

and to, you know, kind of record numbers of Chinese aircrafts, warplanes flying into Taiwan's air defense identification zone. It's all part of this sort of attempt to display your might more prominently, even if you're not hoping to use it. And that wasn't really happening five, 10 years ago. Christian Shepard, thanks so much for joining us. Yeah, it's great to be here. My pleasure.

That's all for today. I'm Jonathan Mopsy, in for Jamie Poisson. Thanks for listening to FrontBurner. We'll talk to you tomorrow. For more CBC Podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts.