At a central Taipei branch of a popular bank on Tuesday, several customers approached Joseph Chiu, a teller, with a strange request: withdraw millions of kuai from their accounts. “He’s worried the bank will close its doors tomorrow,” he said during an afternoon smoke break on the street.
Chiu said he was not worried about such an event, and there is no indication that it is possible, but it was a small sign that among Taiwan’s stoic, often fatalistic population, something had changed this week.
A few hours later, Nancy Pelosi, the speaker of the US House of Representatives, landed at Taipei’s Songshan Airport with a congressional delegation. The visit, plans for which were leaked weeks ago, comes at a time of extraordinary sensitivity and has threatened to spark a fourth Taiwan Strait crisis.
In general, the people of Taiwan had not been too interested in talking about a visit. As international media ran headlines and op-eds, national news prioritized local elections, a long-lasting heat wave and celebrity news. On one ballot, Pelosi didn’t even make the top half. Having fun with it, some commentators bet on bags of rice that she would not visit.
Foreign reporters quoted Taiwanese people as saying to the world once again: We are under the threat of Chinese invasion every day for decades, so what’s the point of worrying about it?
“It’s useless to worry too much,” Chiu said. “You’ve seen the Russian war and what war is like. If it happens, it happens.”
People’s reasons for not worrying are varied, ranging from seeing the invasion as an inevitable inevitability, to a futile mission that Taiwan will either resist or thwart with US help, to something that simply it won’t happen because nobody wants it.
But then Pelosi’s visit was confirmed and the mood changed. News sites polled and nearly two-thirds of UDN respondents said the visit was destabilizing. Talk Radio discussed preparation and escape plans, and guided listeners through their growing anxieties. At one point, more than 300,000 people worldwide tracked his flight on FlightRadar24, before the site crashed under load.
Hundreds of civilians gathered in various parts of the city to welcome or protest his arrival. Outside the airport, pro-Taiwan independence groups carried signs that read “I love Pelosi” and “Shut up China.”
The largest crowd gathered outside the Grand Hyatt, where Pelosi was to stay. The turnout was larger than expected and attracted a heavy police presence, but remained calm. Well-organized and vociferous protesters carried signs calling Pelosi a warmonger and chanted “Yankee go home” from across the street. Heavy men wandered through the crowd with body cameras or phones held high, capturing faces in the crowd.
A short distance from the road, separated from the other group by a wide cordon and dozens of police, the opposition crowds shouted “Out with PCC”.
Pelosi finally arrived shortly before midnight, mobbed by supporters and media before disappearing into the hotel. His public comments went on Twitter, offering America’s “unwavering commitment to support Taiwan’s vibrant democracy.”
Analysts here and overseas have called the visit the most dangerous moment in cross-strait tensions for decades. The last Taiwan Strait crisis lasted several months in 1996. The following year one of Pelosi’s predecessors as speaker, Newt Gingrich, visited the island. Finally, Beijing swallowed its irritation. But that was 26 years ago.
Now Taiwan, faced with a much more prosperous and assertive neighbor that claims its sovereignty and is its most important trading partner, is balancing the desire to maintain the security of the status quo and avoid conflict while continuing to build relationships international
In Taipei, Blair Lo, a worker in the biomedical industry, said the government could not continue to defend the status quo. With China on the other side, “status quo never means the same,” he said.
His views echo those of Lo Chih-Cheng, a lawmaker from the ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), who told a forum in Taipei last week that Taiwan needed an alternative approach to China. “Engagement with China is fine, but don’t expect that we can change China by engaging with China,” he said.
He supports Pelosi’s visit, but said she and the elders in her life were afraid of war.
After the leak last month about the visit, a belligerent China was shaken and furious, promising dire consequences and warning the US not to “play with fire”. On Monday and Tuesday, the rhetoric was followed by action. People’s Liberation Army ships and planes were near the median line, an unofficial border in the Taiwan Strait between China and Taiwan that China had until recently respected, and drills were announced real fire for the next few days.
In China, the visit was the top two approved trending topics on social media platform Weibo on Tuesday, suggesting that public interest was officially fostered. Much of the discussion was nationalist, pro-China and anti-Taiwan independence; he was occasionally violent. “The bottom line is here, you can’t blame us for what we do if you come,” said one post.
There is also concern among the Chinese. Some told The Guardian they didn’t know who Pelosi was, but saw senior officials criticizing her actions and the military releasing propaganda videos about killing enemies, and feared a war on the horizon.
Zhu Feng, the dean of the Institute of International Relations at China’s Nanjing University, said the US was “adding fuel to the fire” but that China would not do anything hostile in retaliation.
“We don’t want the military conflict to escalate. We don’t want to fight with the US over Taiwan. However, it is reasonable that China and its people are angry about Pelosi’s hypocrisy,” he said.
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Sources close to Taiwan’s government say Pelosi’s visit is welcome, but its execution has raised issues. With the furore reaching such a crescendo, for the US or China to back down would be a huge loss of face.
There is also some frustration that the world is only now getting serious about it. Taiwan has been warning of China’s belligerence and encroachment for years, including political interference and manipulation and cyber warfare. Now the West is listening, having given China a decade to improve. On Tuesday evening, the website of the Taiwanese president’s office was shut down for several hours due to a denial of service attack.
With local elections in Taiwan this year and presidential elections next year, there are fears the situation will only get worse, especially if Xi Jinping wins a third term as Chinese leader in the coming months.