Nancy Said US Can’t Allow China’s “New Normal” On Drills Against Taiwan

Washington: House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has said the US can’t permit China to establish a “new normal” to come down on Taiwan through the sort of military drills and warplane incursions that Beijing sent off after she visited the self-governing island. China on Wednesday reported that it has successfully finished its drawn-out and phenomenal military drills that have essentially circled Taiwan.

At first, the People’s Liberation Army announced the war games in the busy Taiwan Strait from August 4 to 7, the day after Pelosi, who is the highest-positioning US leader to have visited Taiwan in 25 years, left Taipei after significant level meetings. It later continued expanding them, keeping the breakaway island on tenterhooks.

“What we saw with China is that they were trying to establish sort of a new normal. And we just can’t let that happen,” Pelosi told a news conference on Wednesday, referring to the provocative drills.

The Chinese military exercises included hundreds of warplanes, dozens of maritime ships, including a plane carrying warship bunch with an atomic submarine close by, in the midst of assertions by the authority media that such war games in the busy Taiwan Strait will be a new normal.

Pelosi’s visit to Taipei maddened Beijing, which views Taiwan as a breakaway territory that must be brought together with the central area, forcibly if necessary.

Taiwan has accused China of using the new drills as training for an invasion.

“We didn’t go there to talk about China. We went there to praise Taiwan. And we went there to show our friendship to say, ‘China cannot isolate Taiwan,” Pelosi asserted during the news meeting on Wednesday after her outing to Asia.

“The visit delivered a clear statement that America’s commitment to a free and open Indo-Pacific is unshakeable,” she said.

The US alongside several world powers have been discussing the need to ensure a free, open, and flourishing Indo-Pacific in the scenery of China’s rising military moving into the resource-rich region.

China claims practically all of the disputed South China Sea, however Taiwan, the Philippines, Brunei, Malaysia, and Vietnam all claim parts of it. Beijing has fabricated counterfeit islands and military installations in the South China Sea. China also has regional disputes with Japan in the East China Sea. Pelosi said her respective discussions were based on seizing opportunities and addressing shared challenges, including upholding democracy in the face of autocracy, fostering robust economic growth, including through the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework and in governance, and responding to COVID-19 and climate crisis.

House Foreign Affairs Committee chairman Gregory Meeks let reporters know that Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan illustrated that regardless of what Chinese President Xi Jinping said, the US planned to stand by its friends and allies.

Indian-American Congressman Raja Krishnamoorthi, who was important for the Congressional assignment to Taiwan, was also present at the news meeting.

He said the assignment discussed the excess of the forthcoming arms sales to Taiwan.

Aside from Taiwan, Pelosi’s assignment also visited Singapore, Malaysia, South Korea, and Japan.