BEJING: Even as the US House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, flew out of Taiwan, Taiwan’s defence ministry is under cyber-attack and the Chinese military is encircling the island and conducting live-fire drills.
China’s foreign minister Wang Yi has termed the Pelosi’s Taiwan visit as “manic, irresponsible, extremely irrational” which has brought escalation in tensions in the Island.
As an unprecedented four days of Chinese drills begin, Taiwan’s military says it is “preparing for war without seeking war”. And to many in the region, the visit was a diplomatic misstep with unknowable consequences from the start.
Against that is another view: that Pelosi stood up for democratic freedoms in a region where they are under threat, and sent a necessary message to Beijing that Joe Biden should be communicating more forcefully himself.