Nancy Pelosi: find out who is the congresswoman who became the main pivot in the tensions between China and the USA

In the last 24 hours, one name has been featured in the news: Nancy Pelosipresident of the Chamber of Deputies of the United States. She is at the center of the latest tension between China and the US government. On Tuesday, the 2nd, the deputy landed in Taiwanbecame the most powerful congresswoman to visit the island in 25 years and infuriated Beijing, because the Chinese consider the island as part of their territory that must be reunified, including with the use of force, if necessary. Pelosi’s friction with the China is not recent, throughout her career she has not missed an opportunity to reprimand Beijing for what she sees as a dismal record on human rights and democracy. Present in politics from a young age and from a family with a political background – her father, Thomas D’Alessandro Jr, was mayor for 12 years of the city of Baltimore – Pelosi has a degree in Political Science from Trinity College and built her career in the Democratic Party. At 82 years old, the mayor is second in the line of succession to Joe Bidensecond only to Kamala Harris, was the first woman to preside over the US House, the first time in 2007 and the second in 2019 – a position in which she continues to this day – and cited by the newspaper “The New York Times” as an “icon feminine”.

Pelosi has been a congresswoman from San Francisco, Calif., for 35 years, and as a young man in the area, she repeatedly denounced what she called the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre of pro-democracy protesters, and accused the Chinese security service of carrying out secret executions. “The human rights of the Chinese people are not an internal matter,” he declared. Since then, he has criticized Chinese leaders and met with political and religious dissidents, as well as the Dalai Lama. He also called the treatment of Muslim minorities in the Xinjiang region a genocide. Two years after the 1989 crackdown, Pelosi received an official invitation and traveled to China with two other members of Congress. However, he angered his hosts by visiting the famous square and laying flowers at a monument to the martyrs displaying a banner that read “To those who died for democracy in China”. After Chinese police briefly detained US congressmen, Pelosi declared, “We’ve been told for two days that there is freedom of speech in China. That doesn’t fit with what we’ve been told.” The American was responsible for initiating and approving two impeachment proceedings against former President Donald Trump, and tearing up the State of the Union speech made by the businessman in 2020. She is an old acquaintance in US politics and a name of weight. She was responsible for articulating the approval of the stimulus package that aimed to rescue the US from recession, worked for former President Barack Obama to approve the “Affordable Care Act” – one of the two most important programs of his two terms. In the current administration, she is responsible for articulating the approval of some programs, including the “Build Back Better”, a post-pandemic economic recovery plan that earmarked US$ 1.9 trillion for policies that assess the impact of Covid-19 on the economy. North American economy.

28 years ago, we traveled to Tiananmen Square to honor the courage & sacrifice of the students, workers & ordinary citizens who stood for the dignity & human rights that all people deserve. To this day, we remain committed to sharing their story with the world. #Tiananmen30 pic.twitter.com/7UqiJVRS3t

— Nancy Pelosi (@SpeakerPelosi) June 4, 2019

Why did Pelosi go to Taiwan?

A strong supporter of human rights in China, Pelosi does not seem to place much importance on the impact of her actions on diplomatic relations between Washington and Beijing. Upon landing on the island, she posted on her Twitter part of a statement in which she denied that the visit contravenes the policy adopted by the US towards the island, referring to the Taiwan Relations Act, signed in 1979 by the US Congress. At first, her trip to Taiwan could be considered politically motivated, since she represents San Francisco in the US Congress, which has an important Chinese community, formed in the 1980s mainly by people who fled communist China or had roots in Taiwan and Hong Kong, much more free. However, his unexpected visit to China did not have support from her party. Biden disapproved of the trip. According to media reports, the American president, a close ally of Pelosi, hoped to dissuade her from the idea of ​​traveling to Taiwan, to avoid angering China at a time when the United States is involved in the war in Ukraine. But she stood her ground. “We are making this trip at a time when the world is facing a choice between autocracy and democracy” and it is “essential to make it clear that we will never give in to autocrats”, stressed the deputy.

*With information from AFP