On Tuesday, US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi arrived in Taiwan, the island democracy which China views as a renegade province. Although the US does not officially recognise Taiwan as an independent state, in reality most countries – including the US - view Taiwan as a country in its own right.
For the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), however, the visit was a humiliation. While China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) stopped short of intercepting Pelosi’s plane (which, by the way, appeared to avoid the South China Sea because of fears of a military response), it did stage air and sea manoeuvres in the South China Sea and Taiwan Strait, with drills and missiles tests.
