Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen will meet with House Speaker McCarthy tomorrow, while Beijing has threatened to “resolutely fight back”. Analysts believe that since China is actively tinkering with its diplomacy at this moment, Taiwan’s presidential election is approaching, and former President Ma Ying-jeou is also visiting China, Beijing should respond more cautiously than when then Speaker Nancy Pelosi visited Taiwan last year.
CNN’s analysis pointed out that Tsai Ing-wen and McCarthy (Kevin McCarthy) will meet in California instead of Taipei. The outside world believes that the arrangement will be less likely to irritate Beijing, and China is facing a difficult diplomatic moment. Taiwan will hold a presidential election in January next year. Beijing’s big actions in the past usually cause the Kuomintang, which is considered to be pro-China, to lose more votes. Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan, and would instead choose to proceed with caution, or at least try to avoid further escalation of tensions.
Meanwhile, former President Ma Ying-jeou is visiting China, the first by a current or former leader of Taiwan since 1949.
Song Wendi, a lecturer at the “Taiwan Studies Lecture Program” at the Australian National University (ANU), said that Ma Ying-jeou’s visit is “a once-in-a-half-century opportunity to convey the message of cross-strait harmony, so Beijing should not want to destroy this atmosphere.”
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Yun Sun, director of the China Program at the Stimson Center, a Washington think tank, said the above factors “put pressure on China not to overreact, because any overreaction would only push China further and further away from the rest of the world.” “.
However, that doesn’t mean Beijing won’t be watching Tsai’s movements closely, as the Chinese government can adjust its response at any time and decide how much military power it should display when Tsai meets with the U.S. Speaker of the House.
China’s opaque system, and potential conflicts of interest within its sprawling bureaucracy, also make it harder to accurately predict its response.
“Whenever Taiwan does anything that China doesn’t like, China responds with military coercion,” but in the current situation, “they have to consider the consequences of overreacting,” Sun said.
China is also finding that all of Beijing’s actions on Taiwan have come under greater international scrutiny following the invasion of Ukraine by Russian President Vladimir Putin, a close ally of President Xi Jinping.
In response to the Russia-Ukraine war, Beijing also flaunted its status as a “peace advocate” to actively repair relations with European countries.
On the occasion of Tsai Ing-wen’s visit, French President Emmanuel Macron and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen will also arrive in China tomorrow for a visit. Is Xi Jinping likely to want military intimidation against Taiwan to spoil this visit? An important meeting with European leaders.
Beijing’s fierce response to Tsai Ing-wen’s meeting with McCarthy, less than six months ago, may also lead to a rift between China and China after a three-hour face-to-face meeting between Xi Jinping and President Joe Biden on the Indonesian island of Bali, injecting some warmth into long-frozen U.S.-China relations. U.S. relations further deteriorated.
Zeng Ruisheng, director of the China Institute at Affiliate College, University of London, pointed out that the less public and vigorous response “means that Beijing also does not want to escalate tensions with the United States to a level that may get out of control.”
“While resetting U.S.-China relations is not the main task, it is not entirely impossible to ease tensions,” he said.