China announced on Friday it would end all contacts with the United States on major issues, including crucial climate cooperation that led to the 2015 international Paris accord, as tensions and public outcry rose over the House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan.
China’s move to freeze key lines of communication adds to a rapid deterioration in relations over Pelosi’s visit and China’s response with military exercises in Taiwan, including missile launches that splashed into the surrounding waters.
The White House summoned China’s ambassador, Qin Gang, on Thursday afternoon to tell him that the military actions “concern Taiwan, us and our partners around the world,” spokesman John Kirby said.
Read more: Nancy Pelosi’s mother in Taiwan, China tensions in South Korea
Ominously, experts in China-US relations warned that China’s diplomatic and military moves appeared to go beyond retaliatory measures for the visit and could usher in a new, more openly hostile era and a more uncertain time for to the democratic government of Taiwan.
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China-US relations are “in a downward spiral,” said Bonnie Glaser, head of the Asia program at the German Marshall Fund.
“And I think China is likely to change the status quo in the Taiwan Strait in ways that will be harmful to Taiwan and will be disadvantageous to the United States,” Glaser said.
2:52 China conducts live-fire ballistic missile drills off Taiwan coast in response to Pelosi visit China conducts live-fire ballistic missile drills off Taiwan coast in response to Pelosi visit
In recent years, other rounds of tensions between China and its neighbors on the border with India, regional islands and the South China Sea have resulted in China asserting new territorial claims and enforcing them, he said. note John Culver, a former East Asian national intelligence officer, now. a senior member of the Atlantic Council. The same could now happen in Taiwan, Culver said. “So I don’t know how this ends. We’ve seen how it starts.”
China’s measures, which come amid cratering relations between Beijing and Washington, are the latest in a series of measures aimed at punishing the US for allowing visitors to the island it claims as its own territory. be annexed by force if necessary. China launched threatening military drills in six areas near the coast of Taiwan on Thursday, and will continue until Sunday.
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China sent some missiles flying over Taiwan itself, Chinese officials told state media. China routinely criticizes the self-governing island for its own contacts with foreign governments, but its response to the visit by Pelosi – she was the highest-ranking US official in 25 years – has been unusually strong.
Read more: Taiwan cancels flights as China fires missiles after Pelosi visit
China’s moves to cut off communication with senior officials are cause for pessimism about the chances that Presidents Joe Biden and Xi Jinping and their top officials will be able to defuse immediate tensions.
They also appear to derail a rare note of encouragement: high-level in-person meetings between senior officials in recent months, including defense chiefs at an Asia security conference in Singapore and Foreign Minister Wang Yi and Secretary of ‘state Antony Blinken in a Group of 20. meeting in Indonesia.
These conversations were seen as a step in a positive direction in a poisoned relationship. Now, talks have been suspended even on climate, where envoys from the two countries had met several times. This sets back the faint hopes there are for any improvement in ties and increases the risk of misunderstandings and a bigger crisis.
1:28 Pelosi leaves Taiwan, capping visit that angered China Pelosi leaves Taiwan, capping visit that angered China
China stopped short of disrupting economic and trade talks, where it is seeking to get Biden to lift tariffs imposed by President Donald Trump on Chinese imports.
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A joint agreement between the United States and China to fight climate change reached by Xi and then-President Barack Obama in November 2014 has often been hailed as a turning point that led to the Paris Agreement of 2015 in which nearly every nation in the world pledged to try. to curb emissions of heat-trapping gases. Seven years later, during climate talks in Glasgow, another agreement between the United States and China helped soften the blow of yet another international climate agreement.
China and the United States are the world’s number one and two largest climate polluters, and together produce nearly 40% of all fossil fuel emissions.
Read more: China lashes out at Pelosi’s visit, but experts say Taiwanese are ‘excited’
China’s Foreign Ministry said dialogue between US and Chinese regional commanders and defense department heads would be cancelled, along with talks on military maritime security. Cooperation on the return of illegal immigrants, criminal investigations, transnational crime, illegal drugs and climate change will be suspended, the ministry said.
Kirby said senior US officials have met regularly with Chinese counterparts about the dispute. Calling China’s actions “provocative,” he added: “We also made it clear that the United States is ready for whatever Beijing decides to do.”
China’s actions come ahead of a key congress of the ruling Communist Party later this year in which President Xi is expected to win a third five-year term as party leader. With the economy stumbling, the party has fueled nationalism and launched near-daily attacks on the government of Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen, who refuses to recognize Taiwan as part of China.
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China said Friday that more than 100 warplanes and 10 warships have taken part in live-fire military drills surrounding Taiwan over the past two days, while announcing mostly symbolic sanctions against Pelosi and her family.
2:23 Taiwanese scholars weigh impact of Pelosi’s visit Taiwanese scholars weigh impact of Pelosi’s visit
The Rocket Force also fired projectiles over Taiwan into the Pacific, military officials told state media, in a major escalation of China’s threats to attack and invade the island.
On the Chinese coast opposite Taiwan, tourists gathered on Friday to try to catch a glimpse of any military aircraft headed for the exercise area.
Fighter jets could be heard flying overhead and tourists taking pictures chanted, “Let’s take Taiwan back,” looking out over the blue waters of the Taiwan Strait from Pingtan Island, a popular scenic spot in China’s Fujian province.
Pelosi’s visit stirred emotions among the Chinese public, and the government’s response “makes us feel that our motherland is very powerful and gives us confidence that the return of Taiwan is the irresistible trend,” said Wang Lu, a tourist from the neighboring province of Zhejiang.
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Read more: US will stand by Taiwan, Pelosi says during visit as China protests
China is a “powerful country and will not allow anyone to encroach on its own territory,” said Liu Bolin, a high school student visiting the island.
China’s insistence that Taiwan is its territory and its threat to use force to regain control have featured in statements by the Communist Party, the state-controlled education system and media for more than seven decades since the sides split amid civil war in 1949.
Taiwan residents overwhelmingly favor maintaining the status quo of de facto independence and reject China’s demands for the island to join the communist-controlled mainland.
Beyond Taiwan, five of the missiles fired by China landed in Japan’s Exclusive Economic Zone off Hateruma, an island far south of Japan’s main islands, Japanese Defense Minister Nobuo Kishi said. He said Japan protested the missile landings in China as “serious threats to Japan’s national security and the safety of the Japanese people.”
4:19 Taiwan criticizes Chinese military exercises, cyber attacks as Beijing denies wrongdoing after Pelosi trip Taiwan criticizes Chinese military exercises, cyber attacks as Beijing denies wrongdoing after Pelosi trip
In Tokyo, where Pelosi is wrapping up her Asia trip, she said China cannot prevent US officials from visiting Taiwan.
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China said it summoned European diplomats to the country to protest statements by the Group of Seven industrialized nations and the European Union criticizing China’s military…