Biden Time with Bully

What’s more provocative: visiting friends or threatening a military invasion?

House Speak­er Nan­cy Pelosi is rumored to be vis­it­ing Tai­wan in August, to see our friends who have made the most mirac­u­lous polit­i­cal advances of the last half cen­tu­ry, from a repres­sive author­i­tar­i­an soci­ety through four decades of mar­tial law to arguably the most demo­c­ra­t­ic and free nation in all of Asia.

Not to men­tion blos­som­ing into an eco­nom­ic pow­er­house that pro­duces “rough­ly 90% of the world’s most advanced chips.” 

“[T]he chip indus­try is dom­i­nat­ed by man­u­fac­tur­ers in the small island of Tai­wan,” informs For­tune. “Pol­i­cy mak­ers in the U.S. have start­ed to see that as a problem.”*

What’s prob­lem­at­ic? Well, Xi Jin­ping and the Chi­nese Com­mu­nist Par­ty (CCP), rul­ing over both the world’s most pop­u­lous coun­try and the world’s fastest grow­ing armed forces, con­stant­ly threat­ens a mil­i­tary assault to con­quer the “rene­gade Chi­nese province.”

They want us not to be friends with the Tai­wanese. No talk­ing. No hold­ing hands.

Last week, Bei­jing warned the U.S. against allow­ing Pelosi’s vis­it. Chi­nese spokesman Ma Xiaoguang “said today that some peo­ple in the US gov­ern­ment and Con­gress are con­stant­ly pro­vok­ing and play­ing the ‘Tai­wan card’ … and the main­land will ‘res­olute­ly strike back,’” Taiwan’s gov­ern­ment news ser­vice report­ed.

Asked about the pos­si­ble trip, Pres­i­dent Joe Biden offered: “Well, I think that the mil­i­tary thinks it’s not a good idea right now. But I don’t know what the sta­tus of it is.”

By any fair read­ing of all the gob­bly-gook pro­duced by our State Depart­ment over the decades, the U.S. is treaty-bound to defend Taiwan. 

More­over, from U.S. state­ments and actions, all the world expects Amer­i­ca to step up for demo­c­ra­t­ic Tai­wan against a vio­lent takeover by total­i­tar­i­an China.

Even Chi­na thinks so. 

And what does Pelosi think? “It is impor­tant for us to show sup­port for Tai­wan,” Pelosi told reporters.

She’s right.

This is Com­mon Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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* Also last week, Com­merce Sec­re­tary Gina Rai­mon­do called a dis­rup­tion of the sup­ply of com­put­er chips from Tai­wan a “scary sce­nario” that would lead to a “deep and imme­di­ate reces­sion.” Inva­sions can be quite dis­rup­tive. Where would the chips fall, then?

NOTE: More on Tai­wan at Thi​sis​Com​mon​Sense​.org.

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