Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan is over, but the Communist Chinese are anything but over her visit as they throw a ring of fire around the island nation. .China is planning four days of ‘military exercises’ in six zones around Taiwan, encircling the island. Beijing says its armed forces will participate in live fire exercises in some places as close as 10 miles from the Taiwan coast, violating Taiwanese nautical and airspace. .China on Wednesday sent 27 fighter jets into Taiwan airspace which Taiwan answered with its own jets..The blockade, said a Taiwan official, will interfere with shipping and flights to the island, setting up the possibility of a potentially dangerous run-in..It comes amid deteriorating Sino-U.S. relations that are heating up..China considers Taiwan part of its territory and has never renounced using force to bring it under its control. .The US has no official diplomatic relations with Taiwan, but is bound by American law to provide it with the means to defend itself..White House national security spokesperson John Kirby said the United States "is not going to be intimidated" by China's threats or bellicose rhetoric..Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo added rhetoric of his own, saying it's America's responsibility to hold Beijing accountable..“The last 48 hours, with respect to Pelosi’s trip, are just a symptom of the challenge that's in front of us,” says Pompeo. “We aren’t going to sit back and just listen to their rhetoric and do nothing. If they continue down this path, we're going to begin to take real action.”.Pompeo did not explain what the ‘real action’ would be..“We're watching them as closely as we can,” says Kirby. “We said this is exactly what we expected the Chinese to do, so this is pretty much the playbook we expected.”.Former director of national intelligence in the US, John Ratcliffe, says China is trying to save face..“I think what China is doing is, in part, responding in a way that will help them with a propaganda war,” says Ratcliffe. “They made threats during Pelosi’s visit and now they've got to show that they are responding.”.It’s not the first time the region has seen such heat. The last time was in 1995 when US naval assets were quickly deployed. Now, those assets are already in the area, due to Pelosi’s visit and Chinese bellicosity, in the form of the USS Ronald Reagan aircraft carrier strike group..Pelosi threw gas on the fire before leaving for South Korea..“I hope it's really clear that while China has stood in the way of Taiwan participating in and going to certain meetings that they understand they will not stand in the way of people coming to Taiwan,” she said..It was not well received by former US Senator Mark Baucus, who may have inadvertently given the reason for China’s boldness.. “She’s not the president. She doesn’t have to worry about conducting foreign policy worldwide,” said Baucus. “So poor Joe Biden, he looks weak because he either told her not to go, and that looks weak with the Chinese guys, or he’s weak because he told her not to go and she went anyway.”.Lieutenant General Keith Kellogg, former national security adviser to former Vice-president Mike Pence and President Donald Trump, said China is anxious to make even bolder moves because they see Biden as weak..“I believe they believe they can take the measure of (President Biden) and think they may have to get something done in the next two-and-a-half years because they don't know who's going to occupy the White House after this president’s term,” Kellogg said..Ratcliffe says China’s timetable might be 18 months, or less..“It's an opportunity to try and reunify Taiwan into mainland China and I think it's that longer concern that we should be dealing with and why we need to be arming Taiwan now in preparation,” said Ratcliffe. “It reminds me in some ways of what we saw around Ukraine right before the invasion by Russia. We also thought in that situation they were just doing military exercises, even to the point where some of their own soldiers thought they were just there to do military exercises.”.And then Russia invaded. .The Chinese are not standing down.."We would like to tell the United States once again the Chinese People's Liberation Army will never sit idly by, and China will take resolute responses and strong countermeasures to defend its sovereignty and territorial integrity," said Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian. "Let us wait and see.".In a tweet, Biden said, “This morning I held a secure phone call with my national security team. We discussed a wide range of priorities, including the United States’ support of a free and open Indo-Pacific.”.Over? This far from over.
