WASHINGTON (AP) — House Speaker Nancy Pelosi launched her political career being tough on China -- a new congresswoman who dared to unfurl a pro-democracy banner in Beijing's Tiananmen Square during a 1991 visit with other U.S. lawmakers shortly after the student massacre.
More than 30 years later, her interest in traveling to Taiwan presents a powerful diplomatic capstone. It has also contributed to tensions at the highest levels in Washington and Beijing among officials who worry a trip could prove provocative.
As the U.S. balances its high-stakes relations with China, whether Pelosi will lead a delegation trip to Taiwan remains unknown. But what is certain is that Pelosi's decision will be a defining foreign policy and human rights moment for the U.S. and its highest-ranking lawmaker with a long tenure leading the House.
“This is part of who the speaker is,” said Samuel Chu, president of The Campaign for Hong Kong, a Washington-based advocacy organization.
“This is not a one-time, one-off publicity stunt,” said Chu, whose father was among those who met with Pelosi and the U.S. lawmakers three decades ago in Hong Kong. “Thirty years later, she's still connected.”
Pelosi declined to disclose Wednesday any update on her plans for Taiwan, reiterating that she does not discuss travel plans, as is the norm, for security reasons. The top Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Rep. Michael McCaul of Texas, confirmed that he was invited to be a part of Pelosi's bipartisan delegation but is unable to join, though his office said he believes the speaker and other Americans should be able to visit Taiwan.
Asked about planned military steps to protect Pelosi in the event of a visit, U.S. Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said Wednesday that discussion of any specific travel is premature. But, he added, “if there’s a decision made that Speaker Pelosi or anyone else is going to travel and they asked for military support, we will do what is necessary to ensure a safe conduct of their visit. And I’ll just leave it at that.”
The Biden administration has declined to publicly weigh in on the rumored visit, though the military is making plans to bolster its security forces in the region to protect her potential travel against any reaction from China. While U.S. officials say they have little fear that Beijing would attack Pelosi's plane, they are aware that a mishap, misstep or misunderstanding could endanger her safety.
It all comes as President Joe Biden is set to speak Thursday with his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping for the first time in four months, and the potential Pelosi trip is looming over the conversation.
"There’s always issues of security," said John Kirby, a spokesman for the National Security Council, declining Wednesday to talk directly about the speaker's potential travel.
Not since Republican Newt Gingrich led a delegation to Taiwan 25 years ago has a U.S. House speaker, third in line to the presidency, visited the self-ruling region, which China claims as part of its own and has threatened to forcibly annex in a move the West would view unfavorably.
More than just a visit overseas, Pelosi's trip would signify a foreign policy thru-line to her long career in Congress as she has increasingly pointed the speaker's gavel outward expanding her job description to include the role of U.S. emissary abroad.
Particularly during the Trump administration, when the former president challenged America's commitments to its allies, and now alongside Biden, the Democrat Pelosi has presented herself as a world leader on the global stage — visiting Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in Kyiv, Pope Francis at the Vatican, and heads of state around the world.
“She absolutely has to go,” Gingrich told The Associated Press in an interview Wednesday about Pelosi's potential trip.
“She has always had a very tough position going back to Tiananmen Square. And this is one of those places where she and I actually sort of agreed,” Gingrich said. “I think for Nancy to back down would be an enormous blow to Taiwan, and it would be a very dangerous signal, trying to appease the Chinese Communists.”
Pelosi has indicated the value she sees in her potential visit leading a delegation of lawmakers from the U.S.
"It’s important for us to show support for Taiwan,” Pelosi told reporters at her news conference last week.
"None of us has ever said we're for independence, when it comes to Taiwan. That's up to Taiwan to decide.”
Pelosi was newly elected to Congress when the tanks rolled in to Tiananmen Square in 1989 against the pro-democracy student protests.
Two years later she joined more veteran lawmakers on the trip when they were briefly detained by police after unfurling the pro-democracy banner that read “To those who died for democracy in China,” trailed by news cameras.
“We've been told for two days now that there's freedom of speech in China,” she said in one video clip at the time.
The trip had a “deep and abiding” impact on Pelosi and became foundational to her style of leadership, Chu said.
Pelosi advocated for human rights in China by working against Beijing in 1993 as it eyed hosting the summer Olympics and she opposed its bid for the 2008 games. Pelosi sought over the years to link China's trade status with its human rights record, working to ensure China's entry to the World Trade Organization come with oversight.
Pelosi has often made physical gestures challenging China, including in 2009 when she hand-delivered a letter to then-President Hu Jintao calling for the release of political prisoners.
“China is a very important country,” she said upon her return days later recognizing the 20th anniversary of Tiananmen Square in a speech in Congress, and outlining the significance of the country's relationship “in every way” to the U.S.
"But the size of the economy, the size of the country, and the size of the relationship doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t speak out,” Pelosi said. “I have said that if we don’t speak out about our concerns regarding human rights in China and Tibet, then we lose all moral authority to discuss it about any other country in the world.”
In Congress, lawmakers of both parties have rallied around Pelosi's potential visit to Taiwan, viewing the delegation's trip as an important diplomatic mission as well as an expression of a co-equal branch of the U.S. government.
“I understand all the sensitivities in the world, here's the one stark fact: If we allow the Chinese to basically tell us who can and cannot visit Taiwan, then Taiwan will be isolated," said Sen. Bob Menendez, D-N.J., the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. “We can’t let the Chinese do that. Now, she’ll have to judge whether or not it makes the best sense at this time.”
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SYDNEY (AP) — U.S. officials say they have little fear that China would attack Nancy Pelosi’s plane if she flies to Taiwan. But the U.S. House speaker would be entering one of the world’s hottest spots, where a mishap, misstep or misunderstanding could endanger her safety. So the Pentagon is developing plans for any contingency.
Officials told The Associated Press that if Pelosi goes to Taiwan — still an uncertainty — the military would increase its movement of forces and assets in the Indo-Pacific region. They declined to provide details, but said that fighter jets, ships, surveillance assets and other military systems would likely be used to provide overlapping rings of protection for her flight to Taiwan and any time on the ground there.
Any foreign travel by a senior U.S. leader requires additional security. But officials said this week that a visit to Taiwan by Pelosi — she would be the highest-ranking U.S. elected official to visit Taiwan since 1997 — would go beyond the usual safety precautions for trips to less risky destinations.
Asked about planned military steps to protect Pelosi in the event of a visit, U.S. Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said Wednesday that discussion of any specific travel is premature. But, he added, “if there’s a decision made that Speaker Pelosi or anyone else is going to travel and they asked for military support, we will do what is necessary to ensure a safe conduct of their visit. And I’ll just leave it at that.”
China considers self-ruling Taiwan its own territory and has raised the prospect of annexing it by force. The U.S. maintains informal relations and defense ties with Taiwan even as it recognizes Beijing as the government of China.
The trip is being considered at a time when China has escalated what the U.S. and its allies in the Pacific describe as risky one-on-one confrontations with other militaries to assert its sweeping territorial claims. The incidents have included dangerously close fly-bys that force other pilots to swerve to avoid collisions, or harassment or obstruction of air and ship crews, including with blinding lasers or water cannon.
Dozens of such maneuvers have occurred this year alone, Ely Ratner, U.S. assistant defense secretary, said Tuesday at a South China Sea forum by the Center for Strategic and International Studies. China denies the incidents.
The U.S. officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive security issues, described the need to create buffer zones around the speaker and her plane. The U.S. already has substantial forces spread across the region, so any increased security could largely be handled by assets already in place.
The military would also have to be prepared for any incident — even an accident either in the air or on the ground. They said the U.S. would need to have rescue capabilities nearby and suggested that could include helicopters on ships already in the area.
Pelosi, D-Calif., has not publicly confirmed any new plans for a trip to Taiwan. She was going to go in April, but she postponed the trip after testing positive for COVID-19.
The White House on Monday declined to weigh in directly on the matter, noting she had not confirmed the trip. But President Joe Biden last week raised concerns about it, telling reporters that the military thinks her trip is “not a good idea right now.”
A Pelosi trip may well loom over a call planned for Thursday between Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping, their first conversation in four months. A U.S. official confirmed plans for the call to The Associated Press on the condition of anonymity ahead of the formal announcement.
U.S. officials have said the administration doubts that China would take direct action against Pelosi herself or try to sabotage the visit. But they don’t rule out the possibility that China could escalate provocative overflights of military aircraft in or near Taiwanese airspace and naval patrols in the Taiwan Strait should the trip take place. And they don’t preclude Chinese actions elsewhere in the region as a show of strength.
Security analysts were divided Tuesday about the extent of any threat during a trip and the need for any additional military protection.
The biggest risk during Pelosi's trip is of some Chinese show of force “gone awry, or some type of accident that comes out of a demonstration of provocative action,” said Mark Cozad, acting associate director of the International Security and Defense Policy Center at the Rand Corp. “So it could be an air collision. It could be some sort of missile test, and, again, when you’re doing those types of things, you know, there is always the possibility that something could go wrong.”
Barry Pavel, director of the Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security at the Atlantic Council, scoffed at U.S. officials' reported consideration of aircraft carriers and warplanes to secure the speaker's safety. “Obviously, the White House does not want the speaker to go and I think that's why you're getting some of these suggestions.”
“She's not going to go with an armada,” Pavel said.
They also said that a stepped-up U.S. military presence to safeguard Pelosi risked raising tensions.
“It is very possible that ... our attempts to deter actually send a much different signal than the one we intend to send,” Cozad said. “And so you get into ... some sort of an escalatory spiral, where our attempts to deter are actually seen as increasingly provocative and vice versa. And that can be a very dangerous dynamic.”
On Monday, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian said Beijing had repeatedly expressed its “solemn position” over a potential Pelosi visit. He told reporters that China is prepared to “take firm and strong measures to defend national sovereignty and territorial integrity.”
Milley said this week that the number of intercepts by Chinese aircraft and ships in the Pacific region with U.S. and other partner forces has increased significantly over the past five years. He said Beijing’s military has become far more aggressive and dangerous, and that the number of unsafe interactions has risen by similar proportions.
Those include reports of Chinese fighter jets flying so close to a Canadian air security patrol last month that the Canadian pilot had to swerve to avoid collision, and another close call with an Australian surveillance flight in late May in which the Chinese crew released a flurry of metal scraps that were sucked into the other plane’s engine.
U.S. officials say that the prospects of an intercept or show of force by Chinese aircraft near Pelosi’s flight raises concerns, prompting the need for American aircraft and other assets to be nearby.
The U.S. aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan and its strike group is currently operating in the western Pacific, and made a port call in Singapore over the weekend. The strike group involves at least two other Navy ships and Carrier Air Wing 5, which includes F/A-18 fighter jets, helicopters and surveillance aircraft.
Prior to pulling into port in Singapore, the strike group was operating in the South China Sea. In addition, another Navy ship, the USS Benfold, a destroyer, has been conducting freedom of navigation operations in the region, including a passage through the Taiwan Strait last week.