TAIPEI: Taiwan struck a defiant tone on Wednesday as it hosted US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, with a furious China gearing up for military exercises dangerously close to the island’s shores in retaliation for the visit.

As the tension is mounting in the region, Southeast Asian nations urged restraint over Taiwan after US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to the island prompted an enraged China to vow “punishment”.

Pelosi landed in Taiwan on Tuesday despite a series of increasingly stark threats from Beijing, which views the island as its territory and had said it would consider the visit a major provocation.

China responded swiftly, announcing what it said were “necessary and just” military drills in the seas just off Taiwan’s coast — some of the world’s busiest waterways.

Asean urges all sides to exercise restraint, de-escalate tension

“In the current struggle surrounding Pelosi’s Taiwan visit, the United States are the provocateurs, China is the victim,” Beijing’s foreign ministry said.

But Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen said the island of 23 million would not be cowed. “Facing deliberately heightened military threats, Taiwan will not back down. We will... continue to hold the line of defence for democracy,” Tsai said at an event with Pelosi in Taipei.

She also thanked the 82-year-old US lawmaker for “taking concrete actions to show your staunch support for Taiwan at this critical moment”.

China tries to keep Taiwan isolated on the world stage and opposes countries having official exchanges with Taipei.

Pelosi, second in line to the presidency, is the highest-profile elected US official to visit Taiwan in 25 years.

“Today, our delegation... came to Taiwan to make unequivocally clear we will not abandon our commitment to Taiwan,” she said at the event with Tsai.

She added her group had come “in friendship to Taiwan” and “in peace to the region”.

Before leaving Taiwan, Pelosi also met several dissidents who have previously been in the crosshairs of China’s wrath — including Tiananmen protest student leader Wu’er Kaixi.

Asean FMs’ meeting

Pelosi’s dramatic trip to Taipei overshadowed a meeting of Asso­ciation of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) foreign ministers in Phnom Penh, which had been expected to focus on the bloody crisis engulfing Myanmar.

Asean spokesman Kung Phoak, Cambodia’s deputy foreign minister, said ministers at the closed-door talks — meeting face to face for the first time since the pandemic — had expressed concern over growing tension in the Taiwan Strait.

“We hope that all sides will try their best to deescalate the tension there, avoid actions that may contribute to the escalation of tension and engage in dialogue,” Kung Phoak told reporters.

Published in Dawn, August 4th, 2022