The Legacy of the Nancy Pelosi Visit to Taiwan and Linkages in the U.S.-China Relationship
In August 2022, then-Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi traveled to Taiwan as part of an Indo-Pacific congressional delegation tour. The Asia tour included Singapore, Malaysia, South Korea, and Japan as well, but it was her stop in Taipei on August 2-3 that triggered an international crisis. Pelosi’s trip to Taiwan marked the highest-level delegation by an American politician since 1997, when then-Speaker Newt Gingrich made the trek. These two trips by the person second-in-line for the U.S. presidency were strong signals of congressional support for Taiwan.
At the time of the Pelosi delegation, Ambassador Zhang Jun, who served as the People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) Permanent Representative to the United Nations from 2019-2024, connected the two speakers’ trips with a veiled warning, “A previous mistake does not make the following mistake legitimate.”
The PRC response to the Pelosi trip differed substantially from its response to Gingrich’s visit, which occurred one year after the end of the Third Taiwan Strait Crisis in 1996.
Rather than the relatively muted reaction to the Gingrich visit, immediately after Pelosi left Taipei, the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) conducted a large-scale military exercise around Taiwan, including firing missiles over Taiwan. The PLA began crossing the median line of the Taiwan Strait almost every day into the area that Taiwan functionally controls. These moves erased a decades-long tacit agreement, orchestrated by Washington in 1955, dividing the strait in half to deconflict military operations by Beijing and Taipei. The so-called “Davis Line” helped to maintain stability for the duration of the Cold War and into the 21st century.
These actions altered the cross-Strait status quo, while another series of actions by leadership in Beijing affected China’s ability to engage with Washington. China implemented eight “countermeasures,” cutting off high-level exchange, cooperation, and dialogue on critical bilateral issues, centered largely around military issues. Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leadership has linked a country’s relations with Taiwan to all other aspects of the bilateral relationship for decades. Linking one aspect of a bilateral relationship to broader ties is not unique to cross-Strait relations in the 21st century.
The linkage policy goes back to Henry Kissinger and Richard Nixon. During the Cold War, the Nixon administration would negotiate and interact with the Soviet Union based on how Moscow was supporting other countries, such as North Vietnam, or acting out against Washington.
This policy brief analyzes the impact and legacy of the August 2022 Pelosi trip to Taiwan, with a particular focus on Beijing’s countermeasures. While much ink has been spilled on the security and cross-Strait implication of the delegation, the implementation of the eight countermeasures may perhaps have a greater long-term impact on the Sino-American relationship. In an era of renewed great power competition, the world’s two major powers—Washington and Beijing—need to develop and maintain communication channels. Sustained and reliable communication is key to avoid conflicts, misinterpretations, or accidents. This type of bilateral engagement between the United States and Soviet Union helped to maintain stability during the Cold War even during the tensest of moments. The two powers were able to delink controversial topics from arms control negotiations, reducing the risk of accidental conflict.
Beijing should adopt a similar approach to its relations with the United States: delinking critical communication channels and areas of cooperation, especially around topics related nuclear risk reduction and the use of artificial intelligence, from the disagreement over Taiwan.
The Eight Countermeasures and Bilateral Communication Channels
Beijing’s non-military response focused on the Biden administration’s cooperation agenda with China. The eight countermeasures canceled or suspended direct talks, meetings, and cooperation between the two countries in a variety of fields important to the Biden administration. The announcement stated,
In disregard of China’s strong opposition and serious representations, Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi visited China’s Taiwan region. On 5 August, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced the following countermeasures in response:
- Canceling China-U.S. Theater Commanders Talk.
- Canceling China-U.S. Defense Policy Coordination Talks (DPCT).
- Canceling China-U.S. Military Maritime Consultative Agreement (MMCA) meetings.
- Suspending China-U.S. cooperation on the repatriation of illegal immigrants.
- Suspending China-U.S. cooperation on legal assistance in criminal matters.
- Suspending China-U.S. cooperation against transnational crimes.
- Suspending China-U.S. counternarcotics cooperation.
- Suspending China-U.S. talks on climate change.
Beijing was willing to undermine its relationship with the Biden administration because CCP leadership wanted to send a clear message about the role of Taiwan as a core Chinese interest and its effect on less important issues. The suspension of the counternarcotics cooperation—at a time when the Biden administration wanted stronger actions from China on the fentanyl issue—and climate change talks—another Biden priority—were particularly problematic.
The three canceled military meetings prevented American military and civilian defense leadership from communicating with their PRC counterparts for years. These meetings and talks are meant to reduce tensions between the two militaries and to exchange views on common and strained issues. None of them took place during 2022 or 2023. It took a summit between then-President Joe Biden and CCP paramount leader Xi Jinping in November 2023 to restore the talks. In the U.S. readout of the summit,
The two leaders . . . welcomed the resumption of bilateral cooperation to combat global illicit drug manufacturing and trafficking, including synthetic drugs like fentanyl, and establishment of a working group for ongoing communication and law enforcement coordination on counternarcotics issues. . . . The two leaders welcomed the resumption of high-level military-to-military communication, as well as the U.S.-China Defense Policy Coordination Talks and the U.S.-China Military Maritime Consultative Agreement meetings. Both sides are also resuming telephone conversations between theater commanders. The leaders affirmed the need to address the risks of advanced AI systems and improve AI safety through U.S.-China government talks.
The canceled talks restarted after then-Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General C.Q. Brown spoke to his counterpart in December 2023. And even then, the next Theater Commanders Talk did not occur until September 2024 when head of Indo-Pacific Command Admiral Samuel Paparo spoke to commander of the People’s Liberation Army Southern Theater Command General Wu Yanan. The Defense Policy Coordination Talks resumed in January 2024, with a follow-up meeting in September 2024. These talks, including the MMCA meetings, have continued during the second Trump administration.
Beijing expanded its punishment against the United States, connecting “the very core of China’s core interests” to other parts of its important relationship with the United States. The message was simple: progress in the U.S.-China relationship will depend on U.S. support for Taiwan, regardless of the executive branch’s ability to control legislative support.
China’s linkage behavior toward Taiwan and the United States in August 2022 is not a historical anomaly.
A History of Linkage and Delinkage
The PRC’s response to the Pelosi trip is an example of Beijing practicing a form of the “linkage” principle. Linkage, and delinkage, is the connecting or severing of two issues in negotiations. Powers often link issues together in order to gain leverage over another country. And countries also delink issues in order to make progress during difficult negotiations to achieve a breakthrough. This theory played out regularly throughout the Cold War in interactions between the United States and the Soviet Union.
During the Nixon administration, Washington regularly linked issues together. Nixon defined his linkage theory to Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird: “We must seek to advance on a front at least broad enough to make clear that we see some relationship between political and military issues. . . . [The Soviets] should be brought to understand that they cannot expect to reap the benefits of cooperation in one area while seeking to take advantage of tension or confrontation elsewhere.” Nixon threatened to cancel a summit with the Soviets as a way to pressure them into limiting their support for the North Vietnamese. In Nixon’s own words, his administration’s approach was to “keep kicking them [the Soviets] in the balls.”
Another viewpoint, espoused by Ambassador Llewellyn Thompson to reporter Henry Brandon, challenged the linkage approach. Thompson argued: “Each case for negotiation ‘was another throw of the roulette ball,’ and ‘every time the roulette ball spins, one has to watch how it turns and where it falls. There is no necessary connection between the throws.’” He and Kissinger debated their opposing ideas to Nixon. Eventually, such a belief would play out during the Reagan administration.
Perhaps the most famous example of delinkage occurred during the Cold War when Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev separated the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty from a broader comprehensive arms control package with the United States in the late 1980s. Another example is President Bill Clinton’s switch from linking in 1993 to delinking in 1994 China’s observance of human rights to achieve most-favored nation status in the aftermath of the 1989 Tiananmen Square Massacre. Clinton did not revoke China’s trade status despite the fact that Beijing did not make progress in protecting human rights, and the decision was the harbinger of a decade-long attempt at engagement of China as a strategy.
To Link or Delink Taiwan?
Now, amidst a possible second Cold War, it is important to return to the linkage-delinkage debate. Beijing has taken a maximalist position on Taiwan issues by linking it to other aspects of a bilateral relationship. CCP decisionmakers have determined that punishing countries for engaging symbolically or substantively with Taiwan is a key part of its strategy of isolating Taipei and eventually forcing it to submit.
The punishments enacted by Beijing against Washington have already been discussed. China has also punished other countries, such as Lithuania and the Czech Republic, for their improved unofficial ties to Taiwan. After Vilnius and Taipei opened reciprocal unofficial diplomatic offices in each other’s capitals, Beijing launched a significant campaign of economic coercion by boycotting Lithuanian goods and even removing Lithuania as a country of origin in its customs office. China closed its embassy in Vilnius and even used economic pressure on third countries, namely Germany, to get Lithuania to change its policy. With the Czech Republic, an order of Czech pianos headed to China was canceled, and Czech orchestra performances in China were canceled, too. Politicians from around the world have been sanctioned for traveling to Taiwan.
However, not all of these punishments have worked in Beijing’s favor. In the Lithuania example, Vilnius successfully derisked from China’s economy by finding new markets worldwide. The PRC actions against Lithuania woke the European Union up to the risk of over-reliance on China and its coercion campaign. In 2026, Beijing agreed to reopen its diplomatic office in Vilnius at the chargé d’affaire level as a compromise. With the Czech reprisals, Beijing again failed to coerce the country as then-President-elect Petr Pavel spoke to then-Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen on the phone, and members of its national legislature regularly travel to Taipei.
China’s actions and punishments related to Taiwan have created a geopolitical “Streisand Effect,” whereby countries have started to pay more attention to cross-Strait relations. As more countries became wary of over-dependence on China, Beijing’s strategy of linkage on Taiwan may hamper China’s global ambitions and hurt its ability to strengthen bilateral relations with other democratic nations.
Beyond China’s response to a country’s relations with Taiwan, Beijing should also consider how Washington might seek to utilize linkage between China’s coercion against Taiwan to striking any sort of deal in another domain. As China seeks to tighten the noose around Taiwan militarily, Washington may decide to condition a trade deal on a more restrained military posture around Taiwan. While the Trump administration is currently prioritizing a softer approach towards China, Beijing’s own actions may force a change in policy. The China Coast Guard has started to operate regularly off of Taiwan’s east coast. A more tense situation in the Taiwan Strait area would be bad for business and create an unwanted distraction from the Iran conflict. If Trump perceives that Beijing is testing him in Asia when he is seeking to find a cooperative path, then he could lash out and implement additional tariffs or give a more stark warning on conflict in the Indo-Pacific.
Such a linkage ladder does not serve any party as the world, especially Washington and Beijing, is more interlinked than it was during the Cold War. This linkage strategy has already started to backfire against Beijing, and an overarching approach of Taiwan linkage is unlikely to produce Beijing’s desired outcome. Given Taiwan’s prominence in China’s priorities, Beijing may not think it can cede any ground or provide any sort of flexibility on Taiwan, lest it look weak. However, such dilemmas and preconceptions vexed leaders in Washington and Moscow throughout the Cold War until both sides accepted that the trajectory of their relationship was not viable and had the potential to bring the world to the brink of nuclear war. Such difficult foreign policy issues appear to be intractable until they are not. It may take a Cuban Missile Crisis-type event to cause change.
Delinking Taiwan from the rest of bilateral ties would better serve everyone and allow for progress on specific issues, perhaps even Taiwan.
The Next Link: Artificial Intelligence?
During the Biden administration, Beijing understood that cancelling specific cooperation mechanisms would more negatively affect the United States than China. Such a line of thinking also applies to the second Trump administration. Unless Washington and Beijing agree to delink Taiwan from each side’s broader core interests, Trump’s team needs to be wary of the possibility that any progress on their priorities could be canceled or suspended. At the moment, those priorities are finalizing a trade deal and engaging in dialogue on artificial intelligence standards-setting.
The seed for AI dialogue, with an eye towards international standards setting, was planted during the détente between Biden and Xi when the two leaders agreed to restart the initiatives that Beijing had canceled. The second Trump administration plans to continue having AI dialogues with its Chinese counterparts. That desire puts the talks at immense risk of suspension in the event that an American politician or the Trump administration does something in support of Taiwan.
There is no backup plan to the suspension of AI dialogues; it is not like diverting Czech pianos to another buyer. If the two powers aim to engage in “constructive strategic stability,” then there needs to be a foundational framework not to launch retaliatory countermeasures canceling or suspending meaningful negotiations and dialogues. According to the PRC’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, constructive strategic stability means “positive stability with cooperation as the mainstay, healthy stability with competition within proper limits, constant stability with manageable differences, and lasting stability with expectable peace.” However, it will be difficult to sustain such a formula when the two sides have such different views and policies on Taiwan.
It is incumbent upon the Trump administration to convince Beijing to delink Taiwan from the rest of the relationship in order to achieve strategic stability. Four years after the Pelosi delegation, it is clear that Washington and Beijing have yet to devise a long-term plan to co-exist when both sides have such drastic interpretations of the international order, especially on the proper way to engage with Taiwan. It may take a true crisis to force Beijing to change its current maximalist approach on Taiwan. Alternatively, given the perceived global dangers and benefits posed by AI, other countries may press Beijing to work with Washington on standards setting and risk reduction for the betterment of all despite bilateral policy differences. The Pelosi delegation to Taiwan was a dangerous example of how one incident can derail critical communication channels and take years for one side to come back to the table. Given AI’s fast development, neither Washington nor Beijing can afford to wait years to speak again.