(THU 8/4/22)

After Pelosi’s departure from Taiwan … Five Chinese ballistic missiles that were fired into the seas near Taiwan landed within the Japan’s exclusive economic zone, NPR reports Thursday. China conducted “military exercises” in the waters surrounding Taiwan after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) departed Wednesday from her visit in which she said her delegation was in Taipei to make it “unequivocally clear” the U.S. would not “abandon” Taiwan, the BBC reports. Pelosi met with Taiwan's female president, Tsai Ing-wen.

Meanwhile: “As the outside world debated war risks, Taiwanese tourists flocked to glimpse China’s most provocative military drills in decades,” according to Bloomberg Politics, citing local media reports that ferries to Little Liuqiu Island, less than 6.2 miles from the nearest point to the mainland where the ballistic missiles were expected, were busy.

White House message: While the State Department’s official response to Pelosi’s visit prior to her arrival was that our third-ranking elected official has the right to visit Taiwan, the White House assessed it “not a good idea,” according to the BBC. 

One China policy: There seems almost a casual attitude toward U.S. adherence to Beijing’s intense interest in taking back the nation of 23 million people that broke off after Mao Zedong’s communists captured the Mainland in 1949. But Taipei also has had to watch what the People’s Republic of China has done to self-determination in Hong Kong in recent years despite the agreement that Beijing had with Great Britain to retake that special region in 1999.

Upshot: Democratic and Republican administrations over the decades have quietly and vaguely agreed to the One China Policy despite Taiwan’s democratic values and vibrant free market economy, though Pelosi, who first unfurled a pro-democracy banner in Tiananmen Square, as a young Congress member two years after the PRC’s 1989 massacre there. As has been widely noted, Pelosi’s Taiwan visit this week is the first by a House speaker only since Newt Gingrich in 1997. 

In those 25 years, China’s military has grown much larger and stronger. Only very recently, the U.S. has begun to make moves (see the CHIP Act) to try and reduce our economic dependency on China. Could that lead to closer consideration of the Pelosi doctrine, to never abandon Taiwan?

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Car crash kills Rep. Walorski… Rep. Jackie Walorski (R-IN) died in a head-on collision when a vehicle crossed the median into the path of the congresswoman’s SUV in Northern Indiana. The six-term congresswoman’s aides, Zachery Potts, 27, and Emma Thomson, 28, as well as the driver of the other vehicle were also killed (The Hill). 

--Todd Lassa