Singapore: Former Prime Minister Paul Keating has accused US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of raising tensions with Beijing and risking a military conflict by planning to visit Taiwan next month.
Pelosi, who sits behind President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris in US political seniority, would be the highest-ranking US official to visit Taiwan since the White House established diplomatic relations with Beijing in 1979.
Former Prime Minister Paul Keating Credits: Alex Ellinghausen
Keating said in a statement Monday evening that it was hard to imagine “a more reckless and provocative act.”
“Across the political spectrum, no observer of the China-Taiwan relationship doubts that this visit by the president of the US Congress could degenerate into military hostilities,” he said.
“If the situation is misjudged or mishandled, the outcome for the security, prosperity and order of the region and the world (and especially for Taiwan) would be catastrophic.”
China regards neighboring Taiwan as a mainland province, although it has never been ruled by the Chinese Communist Party. It has vowed to unify the island with China by 2049 and has engaged in a decades-long campaign of hybrid warfare to undermine the country’s defense systems. On Monday, Taiwan held air strike drills in Taipei to protect itself against missile attacks, one of hundreds of measures taken each year to prepare for the threat of an invasion from the mainland.
US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi Credit: Bloomberg
Keating has been critical of US and Australian policy towards Beijing, arguing that the future of Taiwan was a civil matter for China and was not “a vital Australian interest”. But that argument has been resisted by the Coalition, Labor and Taipei, which have developed stronger unofficial ties over the past decade through trade offices, while officially maintaining the “one China policy” of Australia
Because of the sensitivity of traveling to Taiwan, which neither America nor Australia officially recognizes diplomatically, no sitting president, vice president or prime minister has visited the democratic island of 24 million people.