Hua Chunying, the spokeswoman for the Chinese Foreign Ministry posted eight tweets on Sunday night. The posts were meant to refute American accusations that China has “overreacted” to Nancy Pelosi’s trip to Taiwan.
Chinese state media hailed Monday’s tweet by Hua as an “powerful rejection of the U.S.” position.
Given that China responded to Pelosi’s brief visit by flooding the Taiwan Strait with warships and jeopardizing civilian air and sea travel with internationally-denounced “military drills,” it would be difficult for any objective observer to deny Beijing is overreacting.-
Hua tried her hand at spinning China’s temper tantrum via Twitter — an outlet the craven Chinese dictatorship denies its citizens but uses to propagandize to the rest of the world.
You are mistaken. @StateDept @USAmbChina
1The US does not represent the whole world, still less the great many developing countries.— Hua Chunying Hua Chun Ying (@SpokespersonCHN) August 7, 2022
Hua sent tweets in response to U.S.
Hua’s tweets were sent in response to U.S.
The PRC’s actions around Taiwan Strait pose a threat to the status quo for many decades. As @SecBlinken said, “there is no justification for this extreme, disproportionate and escalatory military response”. Beijing must be held accountable for maintaining peace.
— Ambassador Nicholas Burns (@USAmbChina) August 7, 2022
Hua responded with the usual terrorist argument that victim is responsible of violence against them, because victim didn’t follow terrorist’s orders.
” The U.S. shouldn’t pretend to be shocked by the Chinese response. We have done everything possible to warn of the potential consequences of Pelosi visiting Taiwan,” she said.
Assistant Minister of Foreign Affairs Hua Chunying speaks during a press conference at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Beijing on August 4, 2022. (NOEL CELIS/AFP via Getty Images)
“Pelosi has visited Taiwan, denying the U.S. government’s promise to only have informal relations with Taiwan. Can a No. The U.S. Government visited the No.
This was a reference to the longstanding U.S. policy of “strategic ambiguity” towards Taiwan, in which the U.S. effectively agreed not to officially recognize Taiwan as an independent nation-state — but also signaled that it will oppose any Chinese effort to conquer the island by force because, as the 1979 Taiwan Relations Act put it, such an invasion would be considered “a threat to the peace and security of the Western Pacific Area and of grave concern to the United States.”
As Hua’s tirade showed, Beijing is very sensitive to any U.S. government statement or action that might be understood as acknowledging Taiwanese independence.
China also becomes agitated when America’s implicit promise to defend Taiwan becomes an explicit commitment, as when President Joe Biden clumsily told reporters the United States would definitely be “willing to get involved militarily to defend Taiwan” in May. The White House quickly walked Biden’s comments back with public assurances that U.S. posture towards Taiwan has not changed.
Hua defended China’s furious withdrawal from various symbolic cooperation agreements with the U.S. over the weekend, including climate change and drug interdiction, by hilariously insisting that the planet’s worst polluter has been “doing more to fight climate change than the U.S.”
In truth, China is burning titanic amounts of dirty fuel and slapping the complaints of environmentalists aside. Even as Beijing boasts of securing electricity for its heavy industry by every carbon-spewing means necessary, Hua needled the United States to “mobilize more funds and provide more technology support to help the developing world deal” with climate change.
Hua ended by asking the U.S. to “return the One China principle, the three Sino-US communiques instead of saltami-slicing or changing the #OneChina strategy by stealth.”
The communiques she referred to are one of Beijing’s constant obsessions, mentioned in nearly every official Chinese statement on Taiwan. These joint statements made by the U.S. and Chinese governments in 1972, 1979, and 1982 supposedly lock the United States into accepting there is only one legitimate Chinese government and promising not to violate China’s “sovereignty” by overtly supporting Taiwanese independence.
The Three Communiques include China’s promise not to use military force on Taiwan to alter the status quo. This is evident in the near-blockade that Taiwan has been under, which was held under the ridiculous pretext of “military drills.” But, as the entire world knows, China’s Communist Party quickly forgets its promises when it feels they are inconvenient.
China’s state-run Global Times thunderously applauded Hua’s Twitter rant on Monday, even though most of its readership is officially forbidden to use Twitter.
“Later, Hua reposted a tweet of ChaoyangShaoxia, an observer of international affairs, which said that the G7 is acting like a thief crying ‘stop thief,’ while China has the backing of over 160 countries for its righteous cause,” the Global Times added, without mentioning that its favorite new Twitter rando was unable to provide any such “list” of nations backing China’s “righteous cause.”
The Chinese military announced on Monday that its temper-tantrum military exercises around Taiwan will continue indefinitely, without regard to the disruptions they are causing for civilian traffic. China announced that anti-submarine warfare drills would be included in the program. This implicit threat to the United States is made because submarines are a key part of any U.S. Navy support to Taiwan.
The Taiwanese Defense Ministry responded by scheduling its own live-fire artillery drills and combat readiness tests for Tuesday and Thursday.
