Why Beijing thinks Nancy Pelosi’s Taiwan visit is different to Newt Gingrich’s 1997 trip

The last House speaker to visit the island did so at a time when both the US and China were keen to improve relations

By contrast, bipartisan hostility to Beijing is growing in Washington and the authorities on the mainland regard Pelosi’s actions as ‘provocative’

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Newt Gingrich pictured with Taiwan’s late president Lee Teng-hui in 1997. Photo: AP

Published: 9:19pm, 3 Aug 2022Updated: 10:05am, 4 Aug 2022

Nancy Pelosi is not the first US House speaker to visit Taiwan, but the changed political backdrop means Beijing sees the situation very differently to Newt Gingrich’s 1997 trip, analysts have said.

On Tuesday, Gingrich told Fox News that when he visited the island he had reached a deal with Beijing, which also allowed him to visit the Chinese mainland. He then visited Japan before Taiwan to avoid travelling directly to the island from the mainland.

The house speaker is third in line in the presidential succession and Pelosi is the most senior US politician to visit the island since Gingrich. On Tuesday China’s ambassador to the US Qin Gang told CNN that the 1997 visit was “completely wrong”.

“The Chinese side was firmly opposed to it from the start,” Qin said. “The US side should draw a lesson from it, instead of making repeated mistakes, and one mistake cannot justify the following mistakes in the same nature.”

But Beijing’s reaction was muted in 1997 in contrast to the current visit, which prompted the People’s Liberation Army to announce a series of life-fire exercises around the island’s coastline and the mainland to impose new restrictions on cross-strait trade.

Su Hao, an international relations professor at China Foreign Affairs University, said Beijing viewed the intentions behind the two visits differently.

Back in 1997, seeking closer US-China ties was high on the agenda for both Republicans and Democrats in Washington.