The U.S. Ambassador to China, Nicholas Burns, said that Beijing has to show the rest of the world that it is not an "agent of instability" and will act peacefully in the Taiwan Strait.
In his first interview since taking up his post in Beijing six months ago, Burns spoke candidly about China's reaction to a visit by United States House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to Taiwan earlier this month. The incident is which Chinese officials responded by launching extensive military drills around the self-governing island nation and suspending key diplomatic communications.
U.S.-China Ambassador
Burns said, "We do not believe there should be a crisis in U.S.-China relations over the visit, the peaceful visit, of the Speaker of the House of Representatives to Taiwan. It was a manufactured crisis by the government in Beijing. It was an overreaction."
The ambassador added that it is now "incumbent upon the government here in Beijing to convince the rest of the world that it will act peacefully in the future." Burn noted there was a lot of concern around the world that China has now become an agent of instability in the Taiwan Strait, as per CNN.
Burns, who is a career diplomat and former U.S. Ambassador to NATO, arrived in Beijing in March to take up what is arguably the U.S.' most important diplomatic posting. He is in charge of navigating the U.S.-China relations that are already strained by tensions over a range of issues including China's human rights record, trade practices, and military expansion in the South China Sea.
Furthermore, China's restrictive COVID-19 protocols have also reduced diplomatic travel into and out of the country. This placed Burns even more squarely at the front line of handling the increasingly contentious relationship between the world's two largest economies.
According to Newsweek, Burns received a late-night summons followed by a dressing-down from a senior Chinese diplomat over Washington's failure to block Pelosi's trip to Taiwan. A vice foreign minister in Beijing, Xie Feng, called in the U.S. Ambassador and "lodged stern representations and strong protests."
Tense Relations
The situation comes as China views Taiwan as part of its territory but exercises no jurisdiction over the island or its people. The island nation's population largely welcomed the California Democrat's stopover, making her the first serving speaker to set foot in Taipei in the last 25 years.
Pelosi is a long-time critic of Beijing's human rights record, and said during an audience with Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen that "America made a bedrock promise to always stand with Taiwan."
In response to China's military drills, Taiwan deployed its own forces as Beijing announced it has more maneuvers planned. However, experts argue that a lot can already be gleaned from what China is doing and is not doing, so far.
Chinese authorities will most likely draw lessons on its own military capabilities from the exercises, which more closely resembled what an actual strike on the island claimed by Beijing as its own territory would look like, the Associated Press reported.
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