Regarding the comments he made during a Monday news briefing, President Joe Biden may as well have gift-wrapped Taiwan to hand over to the Chinese Communist Party itself.
The country of Taiwan remains, to this day, one of the few areas over which Bejing claims sovereignty but does not outright control. While the U.S. has avoided fully affirming China’s sovereignty over Taiwan, for decades it has recognized the “One China” policy, which claims that the People’s Republic of China — founded and ruled over by the CCP — is “the sole legal Government of China.” Therefore, the Republic of China — Taiwan’s democratic government — is not officially recognized by the U.S. government.
Tensions began escalating when news broke that Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi was expected to visit Taiwan’s capitol, Taipei, during her upcoming tour of Asia, making her the highest ranking U.S. official in twenty-five years to make an official visit.
Likely in response to CCP pressure, Pelosi refused to even mention the country in a statement detailing her planned trip.
Even more disturbingly, White House rhetoric on Tawian/China relations took a sudden shift. Confused and softened messaging from Biden and his White House made one thing very clear — the Democrats currently in power have no clear conviction on the matter.
If you were to look at NBC News’ coverage of the event, you would be none the wiser that Biden had, in fact, sold out one of the sole bastions of freedom left in the Eastern world.
“Biden Says U.S. Will Defend Taiwan Militarily If China Invades,” a NBC News clip of the briefing is titled on YouTube.
Nothing in that title is an outright lie, but it omits some important context.
Should the U.S. acknowledge Taiwan’s independence?
While Biden did admit that he would be willing to send troops to defend against Taiwan being “taken by force,” one could infer from his statements that, if such a takeover is coerced using less violent methods, the U.S. would not be offering military aid.
Later, the White House flat out admitted that it does not support Taiwan, assuring that CCP officials had no reason to be concerned with Pelosi’s visit.
“We have said that we do not support Taiwan independence, and we have said that we expect cross-strait differences to be resolved by peaceful means,” National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said, according to the Independent U.K.
“Put simply, there is no reason for Beijing to turn a potential visit consistent with long-standing U.S. policy into some sort of crisis or conflict or use it as a pretext to increase aggressive military activity in or around the Taiwan Strait”.
There should be a clear, unquestioned understanding that Taiwan is an independent country, not a province of Communist China.
Unfortunately, to Biden and his cronies, that doesn’t appear to be the case.
If the White House’s confusion over what stance to take in regards to Taiwan’s independence is clear to us, it’s most certainly also clear to CCP officials.
And China will likely be more willing to act amidst the chaos. War preparations currently underway in Taiwan suggest as much.
