Pelosi has toured and left Taiwan. Let us continue to intercede for peace given how much her visit has angered China.

From The New York Times. After weeks of silence ahead of a high-stakes visit to Taiwan, Speaker Nancy Pelosi was anything but understated on Wednesday during a day of high-profile meetings, in which she offered support for Taiwan and irked China.

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In a pair of morning meetings that were partly broadcast online, Ms. Pelosi met with Taiwanese lawmakers and then with Taiwan’s president, Tsai Ing-wen, to whom she offered assurances of United States support despite threats from China.

“Today the world faces a choice between democracy and autocracy,” Ms. Pelosi said. “America’s determination to preserve democracy here in Taiwan and around the world remains ironclad.”

The meetings, though light on substance, were widely welcomed in Taiwan as a symbolic victory. Ms. Pelosi’s trip made her the highest-ranking active member of the United States government to visit the island in 25 years and offered a rare moment of international support for the self-ruled democratic island, which China has worked relentlessly to isolate….

The trip took place against the backdrop of increasingly heated warnings from China, which claims Taiwan as its territory. Beijing condemned the speaker’s visit in strong terms, responding with plans for military exercises near Taiwan. It may also damage a push by the White House to shore up support against China from key allies in the region who analysts say have felt sidelined by the trip.

On Wednesday, Hua Chunying, a spokeswoman for the Chinese foreign ministry, told a regular news conference in Beijing that more punishments for the United and Taiwan would follow from Ms. Pelosi’s visit….

On Taiwanese social media, jubilance sat alongside anxiety over what could be the riskiest military standoff with China in a generation. Some posted pictures of China’s military exercises and expressed concern. Eric Liu, a sales manager at a food company in central Taiwan, said he felt both exhilaration and worry….

Chinese military drills circling Taiwan set up a potential standoff.

Although much attention has been on Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan, the real potential for a military showdown comes now that she has left.

China’s military has said it will conduct a series of live-fire drills beginning on Thursday. A post on Chinese state media offered coordinates for five swaths of sea surrounding Taiwan, three of which overlap with areas that Taiwan says are a part of its territorial waters.

The drills, assuming that they go forward, would mark a direct challenge to what Taiwan defines as its coastline. They would also strike at the heart of a decades-long disagreement in which China claims sovereignty over Taiwan, a self-ruled island with its own democratically elected government and military.

A New York Times map of the planned drills shows how in some places they will occur within 10 miles of Taiwan’s coast, well past areas that previous live-fire drills have targeted and within areas Taiwan designates as its territorial waters. Two of the regions where China’s military will shoot weapons, likely missiles and artillery, are inside what Taiwan calls its marine border. In total, the five zones surround the island and mark a clear escalation from previous Chinese exercises.

In its warning, China’s military called for all boats and airplanes to avoid the areas it identified for three days. For Taiwan, and the United States military, a key question will be whether they obey the orders or test China’s resolve to carry out the tests by sending boats and planes into those zones….

China has wasted little time in signaling that it is serious. On Wednesday its state broadcaster released images from preparatory drills in the area indicating Chinese forces were in the north, southwest and southeast of Taiwan to practice sea assaults and land strikes, aerial combat and “joint containment….”

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(Excerpt from The New York Times. Photo Credit: Getty Images)