China will hold two days of combat readiness military drills off Taiwan. Right now the president of Taiwan is in the US.
The Chinese military announced that it will proceed with two days of “combat readiness” military exercises in the Taiwan Strait, following the passage of the island’s leader through the United States. On Monday, live-fire exercises will be held in the Taiwan Strait, near the coast of Fujian (east), a province located opposite the island, local maritime authorities announced.
The exercise area is located in Pingtan, the closest point in China to Taiwan, according to the coordinates provided by the Fujian authorities.
Meanwhile, Taiwan’s Defense Ministry said it had detected three Chinese warships and 13 aircraft around the island this morning, adding that “four [aviões] crossed the median line of the Taiwan Strait and entered the southeastern part of the Taiwan Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ).”
The ministry warned that the Chinese military exercises threaten regional “stability and security.” The Taiwanese leader, Tsai Ing-wen, has already commented on this, considering that Taiwan is facing the “authoritarian expansionism” of China.
In recent years, we have faced continued authoritarian expansionism,” Tsai stressed, adding that Taiwan “will continue to work with the United States and other countries… to uphold the values of freedom and democracy.”
For its part, the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) said these maneuvers “serve as a serious warning against collusion between separatist forces seeking ‘Taiwan independence’ and outside forces, as well as the activities of provocation,” said a Chinese military spokesman, Shi Yi, in a statement issued after the start of two days of “combat readiness” military exercises in the Taiwan Strait, announced this morning by Beijing.
On Thursday, Beijing had condemned the stay of Taiwanese leader Tsai Ing-wen in the United States, where she held a meeting with the speaker of the US House of Representatives, Kevin McCarthy, and accused Washington of “collusion” with Taiwan, while guaranteeing “resolute and effective measures to safeguard sovereignty and territorial integrity.”
After the Tsai-McCarthy meeting on Wednesday, the Chinese government sent warships, a helicopter and a fighter jet into the Taiwan Strait, and announced sanctions against Taiwan’s representative to the US, Hsiao Bi-khim, and against the Hudson Institute and the President Ronald Reagan Library.
Hours later, a spokeswoman for the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs said, at a press conference, that “some countries” support “the independence of Taiwan, in the name of democracy” and that “they use the island as a way to contain China”. something she described as “dangerous and doomed.”
“Taiwan’s future lies in reunification, and the well-being of its people depends on the rejuvenation of the Chinese nation,” Mao Ning said, adding that “differences between systems on both sides of the strait [de Taiwan] they are not an obstacle to reunification.”
The island is one of the main sources of tension between China and the US, Taiwan’s main arms supplier.
In 1949 and after the defeat against the Communist Party, in the Chinese civil war, the Nationalist Government took refuge on the island, which maintains, to this day, the official name of the Republic of China, in opposition to the People’s Republic of China, the Chinese mainland.
Beijing considers the island part of its territory and threatens reunification by force if Taipei formally declares its independence.
Source: Observadora
