For longtime American foreign policy followers, Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan reflects her decades-long interest in China – and her willingness to criticize the government. grandma.
From the student protest in Beijing in 1989 to the anti-government protest in Hong Kong 30 years later, Ms. supported social movements that criticized China’s ruling Communist Party. She also urged China’s leaders to refrain from their authoritarian policies, criticism of which has prompted harsh criticism from Chinese officials.
One of the key moments in modern Chinese history – the military Shooting at student protesters around Beijing’s Tiananmen Square in 1989, killing hundreds, if not thousands – occurred two years after Ms. Pelosi was first elected to Congress. She replied by leading a home settlement condemned China’s actions, and said that “the human rights of the Chinese people are not an internal matter” but a concern of the whole world.
Grandma told reporters at the time.
Two years later, Ms. Pelosi visited Beijing and holding banners in Tiananmen Square It read: “To those who died for democracy in China.”
When human rights activists gathered in San Francisco in 1994 to unveil a pro-democracy statue Modeled after the 40-foot-tall figure crushed by a tank in a square in 1989, she lamented what she called China’s “brutal repression of liberty and individual liberties”.
Ms. Pelosi also meet many times with Dalai LamaTibetan spiritual leaders in exile, and use those meetings as a forum to criticize China’s policies in Tibet, an area the country has absorbed since 1950.
Transparent a 2008 trip to the headquarters of the Dalai Lama In India, Ms. Pelosi described the protests against Chinese rule that were taking place in Tibet at the time as “a challenge to the conscience of the world.” After returning to Washington, she appealed to President George W. Bush boycott the Beijing Olympics in 2008, citing the Chinese government’s crackdown on protesters in Tibet.
In June 2019, when protests over the draft extradition law begins to engulf Hong KongMs. Pelosi praised the protesters as “brave. She said the bill – which would allow extraditions to mainland China – “clearly demonstrates Beijing’s brazen willingness to trample the law to silence, dissent. and strangled” freedom in the former British colony.
In the fall of that year, as protests continued to rage in the city, she put pressure on Beijing by meeting with senior Hong Kong activists in Washington. She speak protesters in the Chinese territory had her “full support and admiration”, and she made the decision of Hong Kong officials to Activist Joshua Wong from running in local elections.
Chinese officials have never welcomed her criticism. In many cases, they pushed back with their own harsh language.
For example, during Ms. Pelosi’s 2008 visit to the Dalai Lama in India, the Chinese ambassador to India called Tibet an “internal affair” and warned that “any attempt to cause trouble” trouble for China will fail.”
And in 2019, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said Ms Pelosi was partly blamed for the civil unrest that has gripped Hong Kong, where some activists have been. try to involve the United States in their movement.
“It is because of the naked cover-up and fusion of outside forces like Pelosi that the violent opposition forces are even more terrifying,” Hua said.
