Nancy Pelosi’s Taiwan visit exposed the US’s hypocrisy on “One-China policy”

US House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s Taiwan visit stirred a hornet’s nest in Asia-Pacific, escalating tension between the US-led imperialist bloc and the People’s Republic of China (PRC). Beijing has strongly condemned Pelosi’s Taiwan visit, which not only threw the five-decade-old Sino-US diplomatic relationships to its worst phase but also intensified the American Sinophobic propaganda worldwide, amplified by the mainstream media in Washington’s client states like Australia, India, Japan and US-occupied southern Korean peninsula. Although some of the US mainstream media criticised the provocative visit.

Pelosi’s Taiwan visit, “to support the independence movement” of the breakaway island, doesn’t only exhibit the US’s audacity and its apparent bid to stir a military conflict with China using its proxy states in Asia to distract the people’s attention from worsening economic crisis and unemployment at home, but it also violates its own “One-China Policy”, which recognises Taiwan as an integral part of China.

Due to this violation, the PRC has taken strong diplomatic actions against the US as well as started asserting its military prowess near Taiwan to ensure its leadership, who are on the payrolls of the CIA, doesn’t cross the lines again.

According to a report by China’s Xinhua news agency, the Eastern Theatre of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) organised joint combat exercises on Wednesday in “northern, southwestern and southeastern waters and airspace off the Taiwan Island.” The PLA’s exercise involved the Navy, the Air Force, the Rocket Force, the Strategic Support Force and the Logistic Support Force.

In the meantime, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi called Pelosi’s Taiwan visit “a complete farce” on Wednesday. According to Xinhua’s report, Wang said that “Taiwan independence” secessionist forces represented by Tsai Ing-wen, riding the US coattails, have betrayed the righteousness of the great national cause. He warned the US, reiterating President Xi Jinping that those who play with fire don’t end up well, and those who violate China’s sovereignty will certainly be penalised.

The Chinese Foreign Minister added that these perverse practices (by the US) would neither change the international consensus that there will be one China nor reverse the historical trend that Taiwan will return to the motherland. Meanwhile, a Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson told the media on Wednesday that China’s countermeasures against Pelosi’s Taiwan visit will be resolute, strong and effective.

The foreign ministry’s spokesperson published quotations of PRC’s founder and legendary communist leader Mao Zedong’s quotes on social media that called the US a “paper tiger” that merely scares the masses. The Communist Party of China (CPC) has criticised the US for stirring trouble in the Taiwan strait by using its influence on the right-wing forces in the breakaway island.

The CPC’s quest for reuniting China by integrating Taiwan

Taiwan was formerly known as Formosa Islands and was a territory of China. When the CPC’s revolutionary liberation war against the far-right Kuomintang regime in mainland China reached its climax in 1949, a defeated Chiang Kai-shek, China’s autocratic ruler and a protégé of the US and western imperialist powers, fled to Formosa Islands with his entourage.

Chiang declared the Formosa Islands as the ‘Republic of China’, which the mainland was known since the 1911 Revolution under Dr Sun Yet Sen, the legendary Chinese revolutionary and nationalist. As the US and its western allies refused to accept the PRC founded by the CPC under Mao, the ‘Republic of China’ (RoC) under Chiang enjoyed membership of the United Nations (UN). At the same time, the PRC was recognised by the countries of Asia, Africa and South America that won national salvation from colonial rule after the second world war, as well as the former socialist bloc.

The PRC was entangled in the Korean War (1950-52) on behalf of the socialist bloc against the US and its allies fighting under the UN. This stopped Mao from initiating action against Chiang and freeing the Formosa Islands. Later, the US’s war against Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia, as well as the Sino-Soviet conflict and the war with India, stopped PRC from liberating Taiwan.

Though Mao’s “Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution” virulently attacked Chiang and his rule, it didn’t end up in any military action against Chiang’s rule in Formosa Islands. Later, after the infamous “Lin Biao incidence” in September 1971, the CPC under Zhou Enlai made significant gains in befriending the US using their shared hostility towards the Soviet Union. The PRC gained entrance into the UN in 1971, with the support of several Asian and African countries, while the RoC was expelled from the body.

The RoC changed its name to Taiwan; however, the Kuomintang flag remains the national flag of Taiwan, and most of its people recognise themselves as Chinese as well as speak the same language. The CPC, since 1978, took a softer approach toward the reunification goal as it had the US sign the “One-China Policy”, which derecognised Taiwan and recognised China’s right on the island.

Despite the US not recognising Taiwan as a sovereign nation, it maintained ties with the ruling clique. With other fascist forces gaining prominence in Taiwan, the demand for secession was popularised using the US-controlled media and government propaganda machinery. The US’s military deals with Taiwan, violating the “One-China Policy”, also played a spoilsport and reduced the scope of peaceful reunification of the PRC under the CPC.

Pelosi’s Taiwan visit negates the US’s “One-China Policy”

While the US government continues to babble that it abides by the “One-China Policy”, Pelosi’s Taiwan visit put a question mark on the American intentions in the Asia-Pacific. While the US has been using regional satellite states to form an anti-China military axis since the days of Donald Trump’s administration, the provocation by Pelosi’s visit not only took the bilateral relations between China and the US to a historic low but also fuelled tension in the region.

If the US accepts the “One-China Policy” that it had signed in 1978, then why does it seek “independence” for Taiwan, which is recognised by it as a part of the PRC? Why does the US have a strong military partnership with the island, which it doesn’t recognise as a country? If the US government doesn’t officially endorse Pelosi’s support to the secessionist forces—she is number three in the power hierarchy of the US, ranking after President Joe Biden and Vice-President Kamala Harris—then why did Washington DC allow her to make this adventurist trip?

The attempt to create a new optics

Soon after Russian President Vladimir Putin started his special military operations in Ukraine to de-Nazify the country and stop it from entering the imperialistic military axis—North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)—the US and its western European allies thought that due to their sanctions and so-called “tough measures”, Moscow will succumb, and the Russian Army won’t be able to sustain its campaign facing a heavily armed Ukraine.

However, the predictions by the US pundits and western ‘analysts’ failed miserably. Not only did Russia achieve significant success on the battlefields of Ukraine, but it also dodged the economic sanctions, and the Russian Rouble gained heavily amid this tumultuous period.

While Russia retains its economic health, the US has been facing unprecedented inflation, which forced the Federal Reserve to change the interest rates after years, sending chilling waves down the spine of the Wall Street hawks. In this scenario, facing tough challenges at home and humiliating defeats in Ukraine, Biden was left with no choice but to flare up a new conflagration in Asia-Pacific, involving China, to consolidate the American voters behind the Democrats and to conceal the setbacks of the US in the Ukraine war.

While the American mainstream media and its global network of client media outlets amplified the “Taiwan independence” propaganda, their efforts failed miserably as the PRC mobilised the PLA contingents to blockade the breakaway island. In the days to come, it seems that the US government, through the CIA, will provoke PRC more to ensure it can distract the American people’s attention from their worsening economic condition and their government’s failure in Europe to the military build-up and a new ‘Cold War’ with communist China.

Who will win at the end?

The US planned to use Pelosi’s Taiwan tour to scare China and as a prelude to forcing Beijing to negotiate with Washington DC on a host of issues, especially President Xi’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), which challenged American hegemony in Asia, Africa and South America.

Rather than successfully bullying the PRC, the US helped President Xi unite and rally 1.4 bn Chinese people under the CPC’s banner and resist any efforts by the Kuomintang decedents to alter the character of Taiwan. With Russia and the socialist countries supporting the PRC against the US, Beijing is now in a better position to combat US adventurism.

For the US, a decaying power, it’s hard to win a victory in Taiwan and “liberate” it. The emergence of the new power bloc under the China-Russia alliance is seriously throwing the US and its allies into an abysmal crisis. For the sake of retaining their waning hegemony, the US and the western powers won’t miss a chance to stoke military tension in the world, and Nancy Pelosi’s Taiwan visit, going against the US’s “One-China Policy”, proved this beyond doubt. It’s time to observe the global ramifications as the Chinese continue their outrage.