Thank you for the question.
The visit by Speaker of the House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi was obviously exploited by Beijing and used as a pretext.
There are several reasons for that.
First, Beijing was prepared for the visit, which was to have taken place in the spring of 2022 and was postponed because the Speaker had COVID‑19. She therefore had to cancel her first visit.
Second, August is an extremely busy month in China when it comes to military exercises. So there were two factors: classic military preparation, but also an expectation on the part of the Chinese leadership that the visit would take place.
It was possible to organize the exercises very rapidly because they had been prepared. Similarly, the publication of a white paper on Taiwan a few days after Nancy Pelosi's visit had obviously been prepared. As you know, no government, even the fastest, can produce a white paper in a few days. The white paper had been prepared and the government was more or less waiting for an excuse to publish it ahead of the 20th national congress of the Chinese Communist Party, which took place in October.
So China exploited an event that the Chinese authorities were expecting. In fact, that is why some people criticized the visit in advance, explaining that Beijing was obviously going to use it to conduct that exercise and try to change the status quo in the Taiwan Strait.
Once again, we have to be clear. This amounted to exploitation of the visit; using it was a pretext, and especially, more precisely, the pretext that there had been a change in American policy toward Taiwan. There has, however, been no change in American policy regarding Taiwan. The Biden administration has said that repeatedly. Nancy Pelosi, the Speaker of the House, has said it herself.
So there is an obvious intention on China's part to exploit a visit and be able to conduct exercises intended not only to train the Chinese armed forces, but also to change the status quo. I think that point is even more disturbing.