Pelosi comes from San Francisco, where there is sizable Taiwanese populations and Chinese immigrants with anti-China sentiment, so she’s been carrying the water for them many years in Congress since the 90s, she has a record of standing up to China and defending Taiwan. I wouldn’t say it’s necessarily a Democrat thing.
Pelosi got big cojones. I give her that. Back in 91’ in Tianman square, 2 x House speaker despite her age and now Taiwan. At the tender age of 82, its hard to argue that she does not belong in the hall of fame. Top 10 house speaker of all time #GOAT talk? She’s definitely popping right now compare to Biden.
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At least when it comes to this trip, I’m not sure her “cojones” are that big. There was never going to be a shoot down of her plane or an assassination attempt. China isn’t even starting their live fire drills until she’s left the country. All the resultant risk from her trip is on our shoulders, not her’s. She gets to go back to the US or her next leg of the Asian trip with all this press about how brave she is, but we’re the ones living here and dealing with the actual fallout of her visit.
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If I put my tin foil hat on tighter, I’d almost wonder if this is to try to goad China into a military response years before they are fully ready militarily and competent to do it.
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We’ve scrambled 4 Navy warships into the area at the same time, which is why China isn’t acting until it’s over. This has caused a definite stir on our side, it hasn’t been easy-breezy on our side either.
Under Biden, we might not win a confrontation, inflation having beaten us down, humiliating withdrawal in Afghanistan, having lost Ukraine and our sanctions against Russia backfiring big time. China is in the strongest position they may ever be in future because we have a senile leader, and they’re milking it for all it’s worth.
Reagan never intended or wanted to meet Gorbachev until after he beat inflation and built up our military and could negotiate from position of strength. Biden is doing the opposite, assuring a confrontation with China when we are at our weakest.
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Not to elbow her out of a photo op?
There aren’t a lot of those in the wider US population, it seems. I interact with a lot of ex-Chinese people who spent at least the first 15 or so years of their life in China before renouncing their Chinese citizenship to become American citizens (that’s China’s policy, just to be clear to anyone reading this, not the US’s). I’ve never met a Chinese immigrant to the US that fits the above description that didn’t make me want to smack them back to where they came from. I truly have not met a first generation immigrant from China with anything but undying love to the country they are no longer a citizen of. Most terrifying is their ability to paint the US as enemy number one, but in such a way that you almost don’t realize what they’re saying until you walk away. I often wonder if they’re all sleeper agents after more than a few exchanges. I would love to meet some first gen Chinese in the US who are critical of the CCP. I believe they’re out there, but I haven’t met one yet. I guess Pelosi has interacted with some or she wouldn’t feel emboldened to do what she’s doing.
I wanted to add another consideration. Strategic ambiguity started with Nixon. He agreed to One China, but he never said if the capital is Beijing or Taipei, he left it for those sides to duke it out. Then Carter came along, who was as stupid as Biden is. He got explicit and recognized Beijing as the capital of One China and so he sold out the Taiwanese, which is why Democrats in Congress, irate with his stupidity, then had to draw up the Taiwan Relations Act to ensure Taiwan wasn’t left vulnerable to Carter’s mistake. Strategic ambiguity seems only to work insomuch as we keep Republicans in power who can understand it.
Problem with Democrats, they think they can just wing everything, like a vendor at the markets negotiate the price for every item they sell. And they end up messing it up on sophisticated foreign policy, which isn’t so simple as negotiating the price of a bunch of bananas.
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Maybe what I mean to say is Hong Kong immigrants. Most Chinese restaurants in USA are actually Hong Kong food. And these have been truly the first Chinese immigrants from way back, before the other mainlanders started coming.
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San Francisco proper does not have a sizeable Taiwanese population.
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She’s headed over to AIT now.
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I want Taipei 101 to put up a big slogan “we don’t care, we don’t scare” that’d be genius.
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They are called Uyghurs. j/k
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This process is a reaction to current world events and rhetoric from China. It’s also a response to China’s movements in the South Pacific. I would expect to see a Europe Australian and New Zealand sail a flotilla in the Straits of Malacca and South China Sea.
We might even see India respond and send a naval response into the Indian Ocean towards the Straits of Malacca or Gulf of Oman.
Waiting for news of foreigners evacuation flights from Songshan 
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I find the English font choice rather questionable and the stripes look very unfortunate…
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Wait, the name change happened already? My memory is getting crappy.
What name change?