China restraint on Taiwan shows Xi Jinping has bigger concerns now

BLOOMBERG

After former US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi touched down in Taiwan last year, it took less than an hour for China to announce missile tests and military drills encircling the island.
By that standard, Beijing’s initial reaction to President Tsai Ing-wen’s unprecedented meeting on US soil with House Speaker Kevin McCarthy has been muted. Although China released statements condemning the meeting and sent an aircraft carrier in waters just south of the main island, Taiwan’s Defense Ministry said it detected only one Chinese military aircraft and three vessels in the surrounding region over the past 24 hours.
Chinese President Xi Jinping has several reasons to hold fire for the moment, even if he plans a more aggressive military response in the coming days.
“If Beijing seriously raises military tension at this juncture, it would make life very difficult for von der Leyen and Macron, and take the wind out of the sails of any European China dove voices for a long time,” said Wen-ti Sung, a specialist on Taiwanese politics and cross-strait relations at Australian National University.
In Xi’s first public remarks on Taiwan since Tsai’s California meeting with McCarthy, he said that “the Chinese government and the Chinese people will never accept anyone making a fuss about the ‘One China’ issue.”
“Expecting China to compromise on the Taiwan issue is just wishful thinking and anyone doing so will only shoot themselves in the foot,” he told von der Leyen.
China’s aggressive military response to Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan, the first by a sitting House speaker in 25 years, spooked the rest of the region and beyond. Since then, the Philippines has moved to strengthen military ties with US, South Korea and Japan agreed to resolve a decades-long dispute that impeded security cooperation, and Australia took another step towards acquiring nuclear-powered submarines from the US and UK.