Showing just how bad U.S.-Chinese relations have gone under 79-year-old President Joe Biden, China issued a stern warning about 82-year-old House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s (D-Calilf.) upcoming visit to Taipei. China has been locked in a bitter fight to dominate the Island nation of Formosa, a refuge for Chinese nationalists fleeing the 1949 Maoist Revolution led by Gen. Chiang Kai Shek. Biden officials led by 59-year-old Secretary of State Tony Blinken and 45-year-old National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan have so deeply insulted Beijing that there’s no room for error in U.S.-China relations. No president in modern history has done more to wreck U.S.-Russian and U.S.-Chinese relations than Biden, for some unknown reason likes provoking 69-year-old Russian President Vladimir Putin and 69-year-old Chinese President Xi Jinping. Biden’s insults keep flowing like a broken pipe.
Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokesman Zhao Lijian said there would be serious consequences if House Speaker Nancy Pelosi goes ahead with her expected entourage visit to Taipei in August. “If the U.S. side obstinately clings to this course, China will definitely take resolute and forceful measures to firmly defend its national sovereignty and territorial integrity,” Lijiian said, acting like the Biden ordered a U.S. aircraft carrier and flotilla through the South China Sea. Things have gotten so bad under Biden’s leadership, that the margin for error is minute. Generations of U.S. president maintained close relations with Chinese Taipei. Things changed dramatically when former President Jimmy Carter signed the 1979 Taiwan Relations Act, ending the 1954 Sino-American Mutual Defense Treaty. Since the Maoist Revolution, Beijing knows to keep its hands off Chinese Taipei.
Biden’s wise-guy attitude has leaked through every aspect of U.S. foreign policy. Biden let his years as Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee get to his head, thinking he some kind of foreign policy scholar. Biden is a shell of his former self, ravaged by age but protected by the Democrat Party defending the octogenarians like Pelosi. While no decision is officials yet for Pelosi to lead a delegation to Taipei, Beijing watches U.S. moves like a hawk. Pelosi is supposed to lead a delegation to Taipei, Tokyo, Singapore, Jakarta, spending some down time in Hawaii, something Pelosi thinks in the perfect summer vacation. But give the volatile relations between the U.S. and Beijing, Pelosi and the Democrat leadership should not push things to the breaking point. Biden said May 23, breaking a longstanding rule of “strategic ambiguity,” that he would defend Taiwan.
Biden’s comments about Taiwan throw gasoline of burning embers in Beijing, looking to pick a fight with the U.S. Given the sate of world affairs with Biden fighting a proxy war against the Russian Federation, the White House can ill-afford to provoke the Peoples Republic of China [PRC]. Biden’s State Department knows that China has entered into a strategic alliance with Moscow to counter U.S. supremacy. Now fighting a proxy war in Ukraine against Putin, Biden has few options before the U.S. is at war with the world. Biden thought his Western Alliance against Moscow was enough to bring Putin to his knees but he sadly miscalculated. Putin has found many allies to compensate for U.S. and EU sanctions against the Kremlin. When it comes to China, Biden continues to ignite the flames. Remember Biden said repeatedly that the Feb. 24 Ukraine War was “unprovoked and unjustified.”
Biden show astonishing tone deafness to what he does to antagonize Russia and China. He can’t imagine that supplying Ukraine unlimited advanced U.S. weapons antagonized the Kremlin. When it comes to the run-up to the Ukraine War, Putin asked Biden for months to renegotiate security arrangement for Ukraine, all of which rejected by Biden, calling Putin’s ideas “non-starters.” So Biden likes to provoke Putin and Xi Jinping, then deny that he did anything wrong. When it comes to Ukraine, look how the war morphed into not a border dispute between Ukraine and Russia into a U.S. proxy war to topple the Russian Federation. Biden expressed his views clearly March 26 in Warsaw, Poland, saying that Putin should not remain as Russian President. Biden’s views were echoed by 69-year-old Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin who said April 26 that the aim of the war was to degrade the Russian military.
When it comes to Beijing, Biden is treading on thin ice with Pelosi planning a visit to Taipei in August, part of her summer vacation. “The United States must be fully responsible for all the consequences caused by this,” said Lijian, warning the U.S. that Beijing will not take more U.S. provocation. Beijing knows Pelosi’s critical track record against the PRC. If the U.S. wished to change its posture to Taiwan, they should rescind the 1979 Taiwan Relations Act, recognizing only one China, the one in Beijing. Visiting Taipei kicks dirt in Xi Jinping’s facc, only making an already tense situation worse. If China invades Taiwan, what is Biden going to say, China’s actions were “unprovoked and justified?” Biden has enough on his plate to create a new critical incident in Beijing. Whatever Pelosi’s vacation plans, she should reroute her itinerary away from Taipei holding her meetings on Zoom.
About the Author
John M. Curtis writes politically neutral commentary analyzing spin in national and global news. He’s editor of OnlineColumnist.com and author of Dodging The Bullet and Operation Charisma.
