US House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s arrival in Taiwan on Tuesday has inflamed US-China relations anew, with China’s military announcing live-fire exercises around the nation and Chinese media condemning the visit as “stupid, reckless and dangerous.”
Meanwhile, US commentators across the ideological spectrum, from Thomas Friedman to Tucker Carlson to Code Pink, have called Pelosi’s trip a reckless provocation to war.
However, to Taiwanese Americans who have spent a lifetime grappling with the nation’s geopolitical status, the hyperbolic tenor of the debate over Pelosi’s visit is indicative of how little most Americans know or care about the people of Taiwan.
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