Analysis: Pelosi's Taiwan visit is Xi's final exam to stay top leader

By KATSUJI NAKAZAWA, Nikkei senior staff writer

U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's trip to Taiwan and how President Xi Jinping is formulating Beijing's responses have put the spotlight on whether the Chinese leader has the chops to handle such complex issues. In a sense, it is the final exam he must pass to win a third term as China's top leader this autumn.

The fact is Xi cannot afford to make any mistakes in handling relations with the U.S. or in regard to Taiwan.

This week, Xi is expected to be particularly busy as he meets with retired party elders at the annual "Beidaihe meeting" at the seaside resort in Hebei Province.

Before Pelosi landed in Taipei, a prominent Chinese opinion leader suggested that China could shoot down her plane. Chinese diplomats repeated that the country would take "countermeasures" against any such trip.

Pelosi's flight landed Tuesday night with no visible issue.

This is not the first time for a speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives to visit Taiwan. Newt Gingrich made the trip 25 years ago.

Back then, China's president was Jiang Zemin, who deftly dealt with Gingrich. Inevitably, Xi will be compared to Jiang.

During his tenure, Xi has been making moves to show that he has overtaken Jiang and another former Chinese President Hu Jintao in terms of achievements. The adoption last year of the Communist Party's "third resolution on history," after the first one in 1945 under Mao Zedong and the second one in 1981 under Deng Xiaoping, is one such example.

The president now will have to prove that he is superior than Jiang and Hu and can skillfully juggle domestic politics, diplomacy toward the U.S. and the Taiwan issue. The Pelosi visit, therefore, is very much a China domestic issue.

If China had managed to prevent Pelosi from visiting Taiwan through lobbying efforts or by applying pressure, Xi would have been able to sail into the Beidaihe meeting a victor.

But China's diplomatic power has its limits.

It was on April 2, 1997, that Gingrich, a Republican Party heavyweight and pro-Taiwan politician, made a brief visit to Taiwan. He met with then-President Lee Teng-hui at the latter's office for one hour.

But Gingrich, unlike Pelosi, was not from the same Democratic Party as then-President Bill Clinton.

Gingrich also had a different itinerary, stopping in Beijing first and holding talks with Jiang.

A year earlier, in March 1996, China carried out missile-firing exercises on the occasion of Taiwan's first direct presidential election, warning pro-independence forces. In response, the U.S. dispatched two aircraft carriers to the Taiwan Strait.

During his talks with Gingrich, Jiang said that U.S.-China tensions were now sunny after a period of rain.

Jiang reminded Gingrich of the importance of the Taiwan issue, saying it was a "sensitive and core" issue, warning Gingrich ahead of the speaker's Taiwan visit.

But Jiang's agreeing to meet with Gingrich before the speaker headed to Taiwan could be interpreted as tacit nod. Jiang probably appreciated the fact that Gingrich first paid his respects to Beijing.

The Pelosi visit has some similarities. On July 28, Xi held telephone talks with U.S. President Joe Biden for two and a half hours despite knowing of Pelosi's plan to visit Taiwan. Although they sparred over Taiwan, it is safe to say the presidents agreed that a clash should be avoided.

But Xi needs to show the Chinese Communist Party as well as the public a bullish attitude.

A quarter century after Gingrich's Taiwan visit, China's economic and military power has increased dramatically. The public demands that the powerful nation flexes its muscles. If not, the country will lose face, people think. Here lies a huge risk.

According to Xinhua News Agency, Xi told Biden, "If you play with fire, you will burn yourself."

The words were interpreted as a warning that China could resort to military actions if Pelosi went ahead with the visit.

The danger was that accidents could happen. In April 2001, a Chinese fighter jet and a U.S. Navy electronic surveillance plane collided in midair in the South China Sea near China's Hainan Island. Even if leaders had restraint, soldiers on the ground could go over the top.

At the end of July, a U.S. carrier strike group led by the aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan returned to the South China Sea after making a port call in Singapore. The Chinese military is also conducting exercises in coastal areas.

The widespread deployment of planes and ships by the U.S. Air Force and Navy to manage risks involved in Pelosi's Taiwan visit serves as a useful reference for the Chinese military, which is always simulating Taiwan invasions.

Before flying to Taiwan in 1997, Gingrich and his staff flew from China to Japan. The speaker and then Japanese Prime Minister Ryutaro Hashimoto had breakfast together on the morning of March 31.

While in Japan, Gingrich looked tired. He also seemed to have been dissatisfied with the way China entertained him in Beijing.

Perhaps it was because U.S. Vice President Al Gore was also visiting China at around the same time. Jiang met with Gore before talking to Gingrich. Naturally, the Chinese side was devoting its energy to entertaining Gore as he represented the U.S. government.

Half a year later, in October 1997, Jiang flew to the U.S. for the first official visit there by a Chinese head of state in 12 years. In June 1998, then-U.S. President Bill Clinton made a nine-day trip to China.

Jiang, now a retired party elder, has always been proud of how he rebuilt China's relations with the U.S., which had deteriorated to what was their lowest point.

Jiang successfully managed Gore's China visit as well as Gingrich's China and Taiwan trips, then quickly improved China's ties with the U.S.

With the party's national congress drawing near, the question is: What are the intentions of Jiang and his former aides?

It would not be strange for them to want Xi to better manage China's relations with the U.S. China's unprecedentedly sharp economic slowdown would factor into this.

This does not mean they would want Xi to make any concessions in regard to the Taiwan issue.

Rather, their train of thought is that although it is natural for Xi to go on the offensive with an eye on unifying Taiwan, the president should make realistic decisions in regard to U.S. relations.

The intentions of Jiang, who turns 96 soon, and other party elders are conveyed to Xi in various ways, and Xi cannot ignore their thoughts.

This explains why Xi had to talk to Biden by phone despite the sourness that hangs over bilateral relations.

Pelosi visited Beijing in 1991, two years after the Tiananmen Square crackdown on pro-democracy student protesters.

On the last day of her Beijing visit, she went to the square and unfurled a banner reading, "To those who died for democracy in China." The message was written in Chinese and English.

In Taipei, Taiwan's capital, Pelosi praised democracy and held talks with Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen.

Although China is showing a hard-line stance on the Taiwan issue, it actually wants to avoid confusion ahead of the national congress.

There is no doubt that 25 years after Gingrich's Taiwan visit, U.S.-China relations remain an important factor that affects Chinese politics.

There is a possibility China will maintain its countermeasures well after Pelosi departs Taipei. Among the reasons for doing so would be to deter more American dignitaries from visiting Taiwan after U.S. elections in November.

The battle Xi cannot afford to lose goes on.

Katsuji Nakazawa is a senior staff and editorial writer at Nikkei based in Tokyo. He spent seven years in China as a correspondent and later as China bureau chief. He was awarded the Vaughn-Ueda International Journalist Prize in 2014.