Nancy Pelosi says Beijing used her trip as pretext for aggressive Taiwan Strait actions

US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said on Wednesday that Beijing’s unprecedented military drills around Taiwan after her trip to the island last week have upended a long-standing status quo in the region, and that her visit was being used by Beijing merely as a “pretext” to act more aggressively.

“What we saw with China is they were trying to establish sort of a new normal, and we just can’t let that happen,” she said, in her first extensive public comments following her trip. “Their pretext was our visit for them to do what they normally do, intensified.”