Ashok Dhillon
Mar 226 min
The recent trip to Taiwan by the US Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, created a lot of anger in China, but also controversy in the US, and the rest of the interested World; all because of the power-of-intimidation that China now possesses.
It was not that long ago, four decades or so, that China was a Communist Party-led shambles of a country, with an incredibly small, weak economy, and mass poverty amongst its frequently starving Billion plus people. Then it adopted Capitalism-with-a-Chinese-twist; and now, it is the most aggressive bully on the block, able to make entire countries, foreign visitors, foreign industries, dignitaries and celebrities, cower, scrape and apologize, for the least of its many hyper-sensitivities and perceived offenses.
The greed for China’s huge consumer market over the years, as it’s wealth and power grew, turned many a country and celebrity into undignified grovelling supplicants willing to do basically anything that the Chinese authorities demanded to access it’s markets, it’s money for infrastructure builds, or even it’s film productions. That era, to some extent, may be coming to an end, thankfully, because of China’s abuse of power, and more recently because of Pelosi’s defiance of its threats.
Pelosi has always objected to China’s intimidation and its abysmal human rights record, and has directly challenged it through her many years as a US Lawmaker. She did it again now in a much more dramatic fashion. This time her recent visit resulted in near hysteria in China, and to a lesser extent in the rest of the China-intimidated World. Even with President Biden’s Administration it was deemed a bit of a risky and controversial trip, as apparently, the White House advisors and the Pentagon advisors did not think it was the most politically opportune time to antagonize China, and they therefore had strongly advised against it.
However, Pelosi did not get to where she is today by being meek and fragile. Her sense of political timing must be fairly robust for her to have succeeded as she has done, so she ignored the concerns, including the President’s, and made a trip into Taiwan as part of her ‘Asia Tour’. Nobody much remembers most of her Asia Tour, but her visit to Taiwan is still reverberating in China, the region, and much further afield globally.
Pelosi justified the importance of the visit to Taiwan as critical support for a democratic State that is an important economic and political ally, and for the additional requirement of a vital pushback against an ever more aggressive China, a brutal human-rights abusing Autocracy that plays by no one’s rules and wants everyone to play by its own.
Some could not resist labelling Pelosi’s trip as a purely personal, and promotional one; a ‘last hurray’ effort as she faces the end of her term as Speaker of the House in November. Perhaps there is an element of truth to that, but that still does not take away from her the personal courage and political fortitude that is needed to defy China openly. Most countries, and certainly most politicians, lack that courage.
China of course was apoplectic at the sheer temerity of Pelosi, and by default the US, to defy it so openly, in spite of its many and very aggressive warnings of dire consequences if it was defied.
In the recent past, the Biden Administration itself has not been entirely compliant to China’s wishes regarding Taiwan, and Biden himself on his recent trip to Asia had angered China mightily and sown great confusion by stating that the US would intervene militarily in defence of Taiwan, if China were to invade it, breaking from its decades-long ambiguous stance of One China. Pelosi went a step further in underscoring Biden’s change of tone - in militarily intervening if China invaded Taiwan.
Pelosi has been a China hawk for a long time because of China’s consistent and abysmal human rights record, which it aggressively defends as its internal matter and therefore not anyone’s business. Yet China continues partaking in the great benefits of belonging to the Western-World-Order as a significant member (of UN Security Council, the WTO, the WHO, etc.) from which have flowed the wealth and prestige it sought, especially in trade the wealth that has flowed directly and primarily from Western countries for its ubiquitous consumer products.
This is not to take anything away from the China or its people: the focused ambition, and the extraordinary ability to plan and execute almost anything, in record time, and to a high level of quality, is absolutely unsurpassed by anyone.
By such lazer-focused abilities and achievements, China transformed itself from an International backwater in the 1970s – 80s to the second most powerful country in the World today. However if China had not had the open access to the Western consumer markets, it’s switch in economic ideology would not have yielded such spectacular results.
Unfortunately, along with its new found wealth and influence came an aggressive ambition to exert its power (both economic and military) in the World, on its own terms, and change the post WWII Western-based democratic institutions and Order to reflect its own principles and views from an autocracy’s perspective. Human-rights were a nuisance in the way of cold efficiency and the unlimited retention of ruling power by the all-important and sacrosanct China’s Communist Party. In the pursuit of that ambition it took no prisoners.
From that prospective, Pelosi threw down the gauntlet to China, and by extension to all autocracies including Russia, that democratic countries had had enough of autocratic intimidation and were going to push back aggressively against their constant rebukes and threats. In addition, the defiance was also an open challenge to the control-freak mind-set of China’s President Xi, at the very time he is seeking an unprecedented third term as President, and so must appear to be in total control internally, and unquestioned abroad.
Well, Pelosi certainly marred that picture at a most sensitive time for Xi - and he and China had to scramble in face-saving exercises through statements of outrage, threats of costly retribution, and in military drills off the coast of Taiwan with an unprecedented show of military force. Apart from the aggressive drills off the coast of Taiwan, China’s retaliatory actions against Pelosi and the US have been to sanction Pelosi, and cut off a number of cooperative initiatives between the two countries.
So far that has been the only retribution. Therefore the question arises, who is the more vulnerable in this latest flare-up of animosities between two of the World’s largest economic and military powers? At this time it seems that China is the more vulnerable of the two.
China’s economy is struggling significantly with precipitous fall in economic growth due to residual supply chain problems from the pandemic, the continuing COVID lock-downs, the slowing global growth, and a drop in internal consumption and external demand. Its Zero-COVID policies at the insistence of President Xi have exacerbated its economic growth significantly, where a targeted 4-5% GDP growth rate has now dropped to possibly under 3%.
The US is still experiencing relatively strong economic activity, record low unemployment numbers and a stronger dollar due to rising interest rates. Even with the coming slowdown in economic growth in the US, it’s basic economy is fundamentally stronger and more resilient, and the deceleration is, so far, well controlled.
China on the other hand is facing a crisis in its massive debt encumbered real-estate and infrastructure sector, which has triggered multiple runs on some of its local banks from an increasingly panicked public, as prices fell and real-estate investments soured on a massive scale, make for teetering banks and a vulnerable financial sector.
Now America has become more assertive in its dealings with the large autocracies, and Pelosi was the tip of the spear in this instance. The aggressive, over-achieving and belligerent China had to be confronted and called out.
While the momentum has been building against China for some time now, including Trump’s infamous tariffs and trade battles which he lost, as trade deficits remained in China’s favour; Pelosi’s challenge broke the taboo of no one challenging China on its most sacrosanct dictates. This includes Taiwan’s status as an quasi-independent State, yet belonging to China. Pelosi challenged that presumption by treating Taiwan as an independent country that is an ally of the US, and only belongs to China in name, at least for now.