Beijing promised to ‘fight back’ over Taiwan leader Tsai’s US visit. But this time it has more to lose

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An anticipated meeting between Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen and US House Speaker Kevin McCarthy in California this week has raised concerns of a repeat of the pressure campaign launched by China last year when then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi visited Taipei.

At the time, Beijing surrounded the island democracy with unprecedented military exercises — firing multiple missiles into the waters around it and rapidly dispatching dozens of warplanes over the sensitive median line dividing the Taiwan Strait.

It cut off contacts with the United States on a range of issues from military matters to tackling climate change, which it viewed as a violation of its sovereignty.

This time, Beijing has already threatened to “resolutely counterattack” if the Tsai-McCarthy meeting goes ahead.

It also criticized Washington for allowing Tsai to stop in the US during official visits to Central America, warning that it could lead to “serious” confrontation between the two powers.

A defiant Tsai vowed as she set out on her 10-day visit that she would not let “external pressure” stop Taiwan from engaging with the world and like-minded democracies.

But aspects of the meeting, to be held not in Taiwan but in California, and its timing – at a particularly thorny moment in China’s foreign relations and Analysts say that comes ahead of Taiwan’s presidential elections, which could reset the tone of its relations with Beijing – with Beijing likely to tread more cautiously this time, or at least not overstep.

“This puts the burden on China not to overreact, because any overreaction will push China further away from the world,” said Yun Sun, director of the China program at the Stimson Center think tank in Washington.

However, that doesn’t mean Beijing won’t keep a close eye on Tsai’s actions as it calibrates its response — and decides how much military force to use — over her meeting with a US lawmaker on US soil.

The opaqueness of China’s system – and the possibility of competing interests within its vast bureaucracy – also make it difficult to accurately predict its response.

“Every time Taiwan does something China doesn’t like, the Chinese respond with their military coercion,” Sun said. But in the current situation, “they have to consider the consequences of overreaction,” he said.

The expected meeting, which McCarthy’s office announced earlier this week would take place on Wednesday, also comes at a uncertain moment in U.S.-China relations.

Washington and Beijing are struggling to stabilize their communications The risk of potential damage to that relationship increases if Beijing does so around the time Tsai meets Pelosi — amid rising tensions over issues ranging from downed suspicious Chinese surveillance balloons to semiconductor supply chains.

Taiwan is still feeling the fallout of that response last August, with Chinese military forces now regularly intruding across the Taiwan Strait, an informal but largely respected control border between Beijing and Taipei. Taiwan’s official Central News Agency also reported on Monday, citing Tsai’s presidential office, that Tsai would meet with McCarthy.

But a meeting between Tsai and the leader of the Republican majority in the US House of Representatives, who is second in line to the presidency, would be another symbolic moment for Taiwan and the US, which maintain only informal ties.

For Tsai, who is entering the final year of her two-term presidency, “this is clearly an important event,” according to political scientist Wen-Ti Sung of the Australian National University’s Taiwan Studies Program. “She has a reputation as a Taiwanese president who has taken US-Taiwan relations to new heights, and who… has been able to give Taiwan almost unprecedented international visibility,” he said.

It raised visibility – and increased cooperation with the US – following increased pressure from China on the island, which is located less than 110 miles (177 kilometers) from the mainland coast.

China’s Communist Party claims the self-ruled island as a democracy, despite never controlling it, and has vowed to take over the island by force if necessary.

The party has vastly expanded its military capabilities over the past decade under leader Xi Jinping – and stepped up its extensive economic, diplomatic and military pressure on Taiwan.

Concern has arisen among some in Washington that Beijing is preparing an invasion, although China’s official language still suggests that this scenario is not its preferred option to achieve the claimed goal of “reunification”.

It is those pressures – and how to support Taiwan against Beijing’s unilateral actions – that are likely to be on the table when Tsai, McCarthy and a bipartisan group of US lawmakers sit down on Wednesday.

Congress has been a pillar of growing US support for Taiwan in recent years. Lawmakers regularly visit the island and introduce bipartisan legislation to increase support and cooperation.

While the US switched its diplomatic ties to Beijing decades ago, it maintains informal ties with Taiwan and is bound by law to provide the democratic island with the means to defend itself.

Under Washington’s long-standing “One China” policy, the US accepts China’s position that Taiwan is part of China, but has never officially recognized Beijing’s claim to the island of 23 million.

While McCarthy doesn’t have Pelosi’s decades-long record of advocacy regarding China, the California Republican is now a leading voice pushing for closer scrutiny of Beijing, and meeting Tsai could help him burnish that image.

Last month, McCarthy told reporters that meeting with Tsai in the US would have no impact on whether he would travel to Taiwan in the future – something he had previously said he wanted to do.

A meeting in California on US soil is widely seen as less likely to provoke Beijing than McCarthy’s visit to Taiwan.

Pelosi’s visit – the first visit by a lawmaker of that rank to the island in 25 years – sparked a fever of nationalist and anti-US rhetoric in mainland China.

This time, so far, there has been little domestic conversation in China’s highly controlled media sector.

But analysts say the stakes remain high on how it responds – including Beijing itself.

As Taiwan prepares for presidential elections in January, the sharp reaction could drive voters away from Taiwan’s main opposition party, the Kuomintang (KMT), which is widely viewed as more favorable toward Beijing.

It may also be connected to another high-profile visit now taking place: the visit of former Taiwanese President and senior KMT member Ma Ying-jeou to mainland China, the first visit by a current or former Taiwanese leader since the end of the Chinese Civil War in 1949.

Sung, the political scientist, said Ma’s visit is “a once-in-a-half-century opportunity to send a cordial message between the two sides; Beijing should not ignore it.”

China is also well aware that its actions towards Taiwan following Xi’s close diplomatic partner Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine are in the global spotlight. Putin’s rhetoric on Ukraine mirrors the way Xi speaks about Taiwan.

Beijing has recently sought to position itself as an agent of peace in that conflict – particularly as it aims to improve poor relations with Europe.

This week, as Tsai is expected to meet McCarthy, French President Emmanuel Macron and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen will visit China — a significant occasion that Xi may not want to overshadow with a military stance.

An aggressive response also risks escalating confrontation with the US, not even six months after Xi and US President Joe Biden called for increased communication during a face-to-face meeting in Bali.

“(A less aggressive response) would mean that Beijing does not want to escalate tensions with the United States to a level that risks getting out of control,” said Steve Tsang, director of the SOAS China Institute in London.

“Improving US-China relations is not on the agenda, but reducing tensions is not out of the realm of possibility.”