‘This is Taiwan, nobody is panicking’: China military drills talk of island after Pelosi visit

With PRC holding extensive military exercises, face-off may be bigger than 1995-96 Third Taiwan Strait Crisis. But people have lived with China threat for a long time, say observers.

US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen during the former's visit to the island Wednesday | Twitter | @iingwen

Chennai: After US House speaker Nancy Pelosi’s high-profile visit to Taiwan concluded Wednesday, conversations on the island have shifted to how the military drills launched by China in response will play out. 

China’s exercises on Taiwan’s territorial waters are about “diplomatic signalling,” Wen-Ti Sung, a political scientist who teaches at the Australian National University’s Taiwan Studies programme, told ThePrint.

“Pelosi’s visit irritates China since it means greater recognition for Taiwan. In that case, the move is precisely to step up military action in territorial waters to cancel out Pelosi’s diplomatic visit,” he said.

Pelosi was awarded Taiwan’s highest civilian honour, the Order of Propitious Clouds, by President Tsai Ing-wen Wednesday.

China had earlier warned that the US Speaker’s intended visit was a “major political provocation.”

Chinese officials also accused the US of eroding the 1972 Shanghai Communiqué, which served as the starting point for relations between Washington and Beijing. They’ve condemned Washington’s efforts in the past few years to back Taipei, which have continued under the Biden administration.

With the military exercises, “there are attempts to create a situation where people might panic” Kitsch Liao, military and cyber affairs consultant at the Taipei-based Doublethink Lab told ThePrint. People have lived with the threat from China for a long time, he said. “But this is Taiwan. Nobody is panicking.” 

Liao said the Taiwan government’s handling of the issue has been exemplary. “On Tuesday, they talked about increasing vigilance, but the ‘alert’ status did not change because of the military exercises,” he added.

‘Potential to be bigger than 1995-96 crisis’

Liao argued that the current face-off has the potential to be bigger than the Third Taiwan Strait Crisis “just in terms of the number of hardware assets” positioned in the area. This crisis in 1995-96 was triggered by a series of missile tests conducted by the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in the waters surrounding Taiwan.

Explaining how the current face-off differed from the 1995-96 one, Liao said, “The Chinese did not have many options to conduct military exercises other than ballistic missiles back then. But now they have so many different options.” He added that there’s lot of hardware in close proximity, “which is never a good thing”. 

The People’s Liberation Army (PLA) had reportedly said that its operations included “long-range live firing in the Taiwan Strait” and “regular-guided fire testing in the eastern waters” off Taiwan from Tuesday evening. 

At a joint press conference with Pelosi on Wednesday, President Tsai said her government was committed to maintaining the status quo across the Taiwan Strait. “Taiwanese people are pragmatic. We have welcomed many congressional delegations to Taiwan over the years. This normal practice of “friends” visiting each other is inherent in our culture and hospitality,” she said.

“Military exercises are unnecessary responses. Taiwan has always been open to constructive dialogue and we will work with stakeholders to bring about stability and peace in the region,” she added.

Speaking to online magazine ChinaFile, political scientist Lev Nachman said that even though many want to paint this visit in “black-and-white terms” as “good” or “bad”, it’s far more “complex”. 

“Indeed, it is good for Pelosi to visit Taiwan and demonstrate America’s support in a way that is not dictated by China. But the US-China relationship is critical, especially now, and her trip may further set back relations,” he said.

“This has become a major victory for US-Taiwan relations, but perhaps it was not a victory that was needed at this moment. It also is a victory that comes with the cost of further strain in the Taiwan Strait and relations between the US and China,” he added.

Liao, on the other hand, argued that launching an offensive at this time might not be ideal for China, as the 20th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party is also around the corner. “It’s worth paying attention to, whether they are actually thinking about making a blockade happen or not,” he said.

Chiayo Kuo, who runs the Taiwan Digital Diplomacy Association, a Taipei-based NGO, told The Print that sporadic hacking incidents took place in parts of Taiwan Wednesday.

“Someone hacked into a 7-11 convenience store’s system and spread hate messages against Pelosi on the screens in some of the stores,” she said. In another incident, she added, a screen at the Kaohsiung Railway Station in southern Taiwan — in a reference to Pelosi — partly read: “The visit of the old witch is a serious challenge to our motherland”.  

“I am happy to see that the international community has given more space to Taiwan recently, but the potential risk of China’s threat makes us anxious,” said Kuo. She said that even within Taiwanese society, the divisions among people are more apparent after the visit. “I hope Pelosi’s visit does not speed up their agenda of taking down Taiwan.”

Chao Yuan, a student of journalism at National Taiwan University, told ThePrint that even though the tension between China and Taiwan has always existed, the visit has pushed it to a new level. “Amongst my peers, many of the men were discussing whether they would have to join the army to fight. This is definitely a discussion that is taking place here and now,” she added.

Field day for netizens

Even social media has been rife with Pelosi’s visit. “Amongst my own social circle, I find those who never post about politics have started doing so,” Chao said. “Even my father who is a Kuomintang supporter (the Chinese nationalist party in Taiwan) stayed up late tracking Pelosi’s flight.”

Following Pelosi’s flight SPAR19’s whereabouts became a national pastime Tuesday. It was the “most tracked live flight of all time” on the flight tracking site Flightradar24, with the influx of users nearly crashing the site.

Meanwhile, on PTT, Taiwan’s version of Reddit, netizens thought Pelosi was the name of a typhoon. Since it also happened to be a windy and rainy day, someone asked: “When is the Pelosi typhoon coming? When will the government announce a typhoon holiday?”

Sowmiya Ashok reported from Taiwan when she was a Chinese language student at the National Taiwan University from November 2021-March 2022.

(Edited by Siddarth Muralidharan)