Japan was the last leg of her tour of Asia, and Nancy Pelosi is not just any representative. She, at 82 years old, is the spokeswoman for the Chamber and in that capacity, the third in line of command in the country. Her trip should have been a state trip and it was just a political trip. It was not only discouraged by the White House and publicly by Biden himself, but also by the State Department and the Pentagon, a trip where he could not commit or sign anything and where Taiwan was left in a worse position than before.Pelosi’s defiant attitude is perhaps explained not only by her being a controversial figure but also one of the strongest critics of the Chinese regime among Democrats, but if it had not been for the disproportionately aggressive reaction of Beijing, as the objective of the trip and the lack of advertisements to justify it, would probably have gone unnoticed.
The first question is why China reacted like this. And the answer is twofold, it was an opportunity to show the world today’s China, powerful, rich, and that has no shame in showing that it is the only rival that can challenge the United States for the scepter of the number one superpower.
It was also part of the US military’s prevention of the opportunity, which could not have been worse, since Xi Jinping is on the offensive so that at the next Congress of the Communist Party he will be crowned with a third consecutive term and with a power that no one had arranged since Mao (Deng’s influence did not receive formal consecration at this level), that is, he is not only President of China but also general secretary of the party, the Military Commission depends on him, and his “thought” was incorporated in nothing less than the constitution. In other words, the collective dictatorship is on its way to transforming itself into a personalized autocracy at the top.
In China there is no democracy, but there is politics, so this Congress is decisive, since it may be the last chance for its rivals to stop this transformation, rivals who have been on the defensive for years, since Xi used a resolution against corruption, to get rid of rivals.
The tour also coincided with fully deployed armed forces and scheduled mobilizations, since the visit took place on the 95th anniversary of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army, and was taken as an opportunity, since, just as Deng established that the legitimacy of the Party was going to be given by the greatest process of wealth creation and social mobility since the Industrial Revolution, Xi has promised the number 1 seat of world power for China.
The third world war is not going to come out of this crisis, but other intermediate consequences may appear, such as, for example, a greater rapprochement between China and Russia, an increase in fear of China among the US’s Asian partners, and a new scene of major provocations, which would not be Taiwan (the Formosa of the Portuguese), but, being an archipelago, some of the unoccupied islands, very close to the mainland,
In fact, something like this has been experienced for years with total Chinese success. This is how Mrs. Pelosi had to travel in her military plane avoiding the China Sea as much as possible, since that sea has already been largely occupied by an unprecedented way, which has been to use all its resources to transform simple rocks into “islands” of their sovereignty, and although there is a ruling by the International Court of Justice against them, nothing stopped the will to pave them for military use.
This deployment outside its borders increased the military investment of rivals that had fought it, like India (in the 60s) or invaded it like Japan, and also led several Asian countries to invite the USA, as it did before Europe to contain the then USSR, after the great war.
The question is whether the USA has a similar will, and nothing indicates that this is the case, doubts that are increased after the last NATO meeting that defined China as an adversary (not as an enemy) and the defense of Taiwan as part of its duties, although there are no actions in this regard, beyond what was declared.
This is how, faced with the impotence of the United States, Pelosi’s tour was answered by a response that generates fear. On the one hand, military exercises that use live ammunition, and on the other, a series of announcements of economic retaliation, despite the fact that Taiwan has invested in China and China has invested in the island.
It may be a response to the application of sanctions by the United States, first, due to the aftermath of the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the support of China, but also directly to Chinese companies after the strategic rapprochement with the Iranian ayatollahs in exchange for oil. .
Nothing like this had happened simultaneously in the past, and it not only demonstrates the power and aggressiveness of Beijing, but also gives credibility to scenarios that seemed like exaggerations by propagandists of the regime, who sometimes express in English what the official spokesmen cannot say. This is how those who said that China should blockade Taiwan, in the same way that the USA did with Cuba, during the missile crisis in 1962, appeared.
On that occasion, the ships of the then Soviet Union were ordered to return, and thus the nuclear confrontation was happily avoided, but the ensuing humiliation cost Nikita Khrushchev his job at the hands of his rival Leonid Brezhnev, a story that incidentally knows Xi Jinping.
The foregoing is to reiterate that the invasion of the island will not arise from this crisis, but it can inaugurate an era of escalations and action followed by reaction. I think of Ukraine where the third world war did not come from, but the first global war of the 21st century, due to the generalized impact on energy and food.
In the case of the island, an intermediate situation of preventing trade would put the entire world in the perspective of a generalized crisis in supply chains and that has had, since the pandemic, impacts on cars and empty shelves, even in countries developed. And there Taiwan plays a key role, due to its enormous contribution to the production of high-end chips, on which a large number of products depend. And this interdependence is a paradox, since it is an explanation of the great productive efficiency of globalization that is experienced, but also of its weakness through dependence on other suppliers.
What is happening today with Taiwan never happened in the same way while the island was governed by the losers of the civil war, the Kuomintang or the nationalists of Chiang Kai-Shek, who came in 1949 to occupy the island. However, they shared with the communists the basic principle that Taiwan was a Chinese province, only that the nationalists accused the communists of being usurpers. The change came with a new generation of island-born leaders, who not only transformed the Chiang dictatorship (right-wing, but dictatorship nonetheless) into a fully democratic country, but also began to flirt with the idea that Taiwan could be a democratic country. independent, which was unacceptable for the Communist Party, since it affects the founding myth in a similar way as it does Tibet and the Dalai Lama.
There is enough information to know why a Chinese leader who assures the Party that it needs personalized power in order to fulfill the promise of transforming China into the first and undisputed major power in the world, along with the first centenary of the People’s Republic, 2049
These days an expression has reappeared in China that was not used for years, which is the characterization of Mao of the USA as a “paper tiger”, which was used during the Korean War in the 50s, but has returned now that China feels it has enough power to say who can travel and when, and what authority can do so from what is still the world’s leading power.
And what is in dispute is that scepter and what has happened is very serious, and the second big question is whether it will be a before and after for the USA, that is, if it will react in a way that does not exist today, that it is too polarized and divided, as there is also a vision of increasing weakness in the White House.
To confront this China, the USA needs a unity and a story that it lacks today, as well as a lack of repetition of the coordination errors that this trip has reflected. And to lead other countries, the USA needs its elite, all of it, to believe in the superiority of its political and economic systems, and that its democracy does not continue to show these signs of polarization and lack of unity.
Perhaps it requires a foreign policy that unites and does not divide, which also requires a reform of the international architecture, marked by the obsolescence of the UN and the like, remembering that the USA was behind the two most ambitious schemes of the 20th century, the mentioned and the League of Nations, this reform being a way of better confronting those who question the liberal order, that is, perhaps retaking something that it should have led and did not do in the 90s, when it was the only superpower.
Today’s China is also in some ways a partial result of the Nixon-Kissinger duo and their offer to open up the world to China. The rest is history and it depends on the USA that this tour does not also predict the future, when there is still time.
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