WASHINGTON (AP) — House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s reported plans to travel to Taiwan have upended Washington’s political divide, with a rift emerging with President Joe Biden over the visit to the self-governing island while prominent Republicans offer encouragement to a political opponent they normally scorn.
Pelosi’s supporters include a conservative Republican senator, at least two former Trump administration officials and the last speaker of the House to make the trip to Taiwan, also a Republican. They are urging Biden to back the trip even as China threatens a forceful response if she goes.
Pelosi, D-Calif., has not confirmed the trip publicly. The White House and the speaker’s office have yet to challenge each other directly, and Biden has not said publicly that Pelosi should not go.
Biden has made blunting China’s rising influence a core part of his foreign policy ethos, but the Biden-China relationship is complicated and he has sought to avoid unnecessarily aggravating tensions. China considers democratic, self-ruling Taiwan its own territory and has raised the prospect of annexing it by force.
The White House is preparing for another call between Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping, a conversation the U.S. president said he expects this week despite his COVID-19 diagnosis.
The growing chorus pushing Biden to support Pelosi publicly is also raising the risk that the president could be perceived as insufficiently tough on China.
“Speaker Pelosi should go to Taiwan and President Biden should make it abundantly clear to Chairman Xi that there’s not a damn thing the Chinese Communist Party can do about it,” Sen. Ben Sasse, R-Neb., said Monday. “No more feebleness and self-deterrence. This is very simple: Taiwan is an ally and the speaker of the House of Representatives should meet with the Taiwanese men and women who stare down the threat of Communist China.”
The White House on Monday declined to weigh in directly on Pelosi’s trip — including whether the speaker has Biden’s blessing — considering she has not confirmed it.
“The administration routinely provides members of Congress with information and context for potential travel, including geopolitical and security considerations,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said, without responding directly to Pelosi’s possible plans. “Members of Congress will make their own decisions.”
State Department spokesman Ned Price also declined to discuss any concerns.
“I will just restate our policy, and that is that we remain committed to maintaining cross-strait peace and stability and our ‘One China’ policy,” said Price, referring to the U.S. position that recognizes Beijing as the government of China but allows for informal relations and defense ties with Taipei.
In private, the administration is particularly concerned that a convergence of upcoming events could make a Chinese response to a Pelosi visit even stronger and more animated than it might otherwise be, according to officials. The Chinese Communist Party congress, expected in November, at which Xi intends to further cement his hold on power, is one of those events.
International events in the coming months also could prompt China to react more forcefully than it has in the past if it believes its concerns are being ignored or its president is being disrespected, the officials said. Those include the annual U.N. General Assembly in September and several summits in Asia — the G-20 in Indonesia, the East Asia Summit in Cambodia and the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum in Thailand — set for October and November. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the administration’s perspective.
The U.S. officials said the administration doubts that China would take action against Pelosi herself or try to sabotage or otherwise interfere with a visit, but they said the administration does not rule out the possibility that China could escalate…
Read More: Growing number in GOP back Pelosi on possible Taiwan trip