WASHINGTON (AP) — House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s reported plans to travel to Taiwan have upended a political divide in Washington, with President Joe Biden at odds over a visit to the self-ruled island, while prominent Republicans offer encouragement to a political opponent who usually despise .
Pelosi’s supporters include a conservative Republican senator, at least two former Trump administration officials and the latest House speaker to travel to Taiwan, also a Republican. They are urging Biden to support the trip, even though China has threatened a forceful response if she goes.
Pelosi, D-Calif., has not confirmed the trip publicly. The White House and the speaker’s office have yet to challenge each other, and Biden has not said publicly that Pelosi should not go.
Biden has made blunting China’s growing influence a core part of his foreign policy ethos, but the relationship between Biden and China is complicated and he has sought to avoid unnecessarily aggravating tensions. China considers democratic, self-governing Taiwan its territory and has raised the prospect of annexing it by force.
The White House is gearing up for another conversation between Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping, a conversation the US president said he was looking forward to this week despite his COVID-19 diagnosis.
The growing chorus urging Biden to publicly endorse Pelosi also raises the risk that the president will be perceived as not tough enough on China.
“Speaker Pelosi needs to go to Taiwan and President Biden needs to make it clear to President Xi that there’s not a damn thing the Chinese Communist Party can do about it,” Sen. Ben Sasse, R-Neb., said Monday. “An end to weakness and self-restraint. It’s very simple: Taiwan is an ally, and the Speaker of the House of Representatives must meet with Taiwanese men and women who ignore the threat of Communist China.”
On Monday, the White House declined to comment directly on Pelosi’s trip — including whether the speaker has Biden’s blessing — given that she has not confirmed it.
“The administration regularly provides members of Congress with information and context about potential travel, including geopolitical and security considerations,” White House press secretary Karin Jean-Pierre said, without responding directly to Pelosi’s possible plans. “Members of Congress will make their own decisions.”
State Department spokesman Ned Price also declined to discuss any concerns.
“I’ll just reiterate our policy, and that is that we remain committed to maintaining peace and stability across the strait and our One China policy,” Price said, referring to the U.S. position that recognizes Beijing as the government of China , but allows for informal relations and defense ties with Taipei.
Privately, the administration is particularly concerned that the convergence of upcoming events could make the Chinese response to Pelosi’s visit even stronger and more animated than it might otherwise be, officials said. The Chinese Communist Party congress, expected in November, where Xi intends to further consolidate his power, is one such event.
International events in the coming months could also prompt China to react more forcefully than in the past if it feels its concerns are being ignored or its president is being disrespected, officials said. These include the annual UN General Assembly in September and several summits in Asia – the G-20 in Indonesia, the East Asia Summit in Cambodia and the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Forum in Thailand – set for October and November. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the administration’s perspective.
U.S. officials said the administration doubted China would take action against Pelosi herself or try to sabotage or otherwise obstruct the visit, but they said the administration did not rule out the possibility that China would escalate provocative military overflights in or near Taiwan airspace and naval patrols in the Taiwan Strait if the trip takes place. The officials also said the administration did not rule out the possibility that China would also step up its actions outside Taiwan’s immediate zone as a show of force, thus possibly expanding military operations in the disputed South China Sea.
Earlier on Monday, Taipei staged an air strike drill and the island’s military carried out routine defense drills amid rising tensions over the potential visit, although there was no direct link between the drills and threats made by Beijing if Pelosi made the trip.
The Chinese generally do not appreciate or fully understand the concept of the separation of powers between the executive, legislature and judiciary. Those distinctions for them are further blurred because the last time a speaker of the House of Representatives visited Taiwan, Newt Gingrich, he was the speaker of a Republican-controlled House of Representatives under a Democratic president.
Pelosi will be visiting at a time when Democrats control the House, Senate and White House, so there are concerns that the Chinese may see this as a move by the administration.
Gingrich himself tweeted support for Pelosi on Monday: “What is the Pentagon thinking when they publicly warn that Speaker Pelosi is not going to Taiwan? If we are so scared of the Chinese Communists that we can’t even protect the American Speaker of the House, why should Beijing believe that we can help Taiwan survive. Timidity is dangerous.
Mark Esper, the Trump administration’s defense secretary, said on Monday that he had recently returned from Taipei and that more senior US officials should visit to help shape US policy in the region. He also emphasized that China should not have a veto over where American officials travel.
“I think if the speaker wants to go, she should go,” Esper said on CNN’s “New Day.”
Meanwhile, former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, a Republican who served in the Trump administration, tweeted Sunday: “Nancy, I’m coming with you. I’m banned in China, but not in freedom-loving Taiwan. See you there!”
Last week, Biden expressed the US government’s concerns about a possible visit by Pelosi, telling reporters after returning from Massachusetts that the military believed her trip was “not a good idea right now.”
A spokesman for Pelosi again declined to comment Monday, citing security protocol. Last week, Pelosi said it was “important for us to show support for Taiwan” and that she thought Biden meant “maybe the military was afraid our plane was going to be shot down or something by the Chinese.”
Pelosi has positioned herself as a lawmaker unafraid to stand up to Beijing almost from the moment she was sworn into Congress in 1987. When she visited Tiananmen Square two years after the 1989 massacre, she defiantly unfurled a banner that read “ To those who died for democracy in China.” Three years ago, Pelosi expressed support for pro-democracy protesters in Hong Kong, again drawing the ire of the Chinese government.
She had planned to visit Taiwan in April, but postponed the trip after testing positive for COVID-19.
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AP Congressional Correspondent Lisa Mascaro contributed to this report.
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