‘Highly provocative’: China military drills commences around Taiwan – Nexus News
China has continued its largest-ever military operations in the waters around the self-ruled island of Taiwan, with the territory’s defense ministry stating that numerous warships and fighter aircraft had crossed the Taiwan Strait’s median line.
The operations, which on Thursday included firing ballistic missiles and deploying fighter jets, following the visit of US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to the democratic island, which Beijing claims as its own.
Taiwan’s defense ministry disclosed that multiple Chinese “warships and warplanes” had conducted exercises in the Taiwan Strait as of 11am (03:00 GMT) on Friday, crossing the median line of the waterway that separates China and Taiwan.
The ministry noted that China’s military activities were “highly provocative” and that it was monitoring the “enemy situation” closely.
Thursday’s drills involved a “conventional missile firepower assault” in waters to the east of Taiwan, the Chinese military said.
Beijing’s state-run Xinhua news agency reported the Chinese army “flew more than 100 warplanes including fighters and bombers” during the operations, as well as “over 10 destroyers and frigates”.
State broadcaster CCTV and the Communist Party’s tabloid Global Times reported that Chinese missiles had flown over the island, with the Global Times claiming the drills had “completely locked down” the island.
Taiwan disclosed that the Chinese military fired 11 Dongfeng-class ballistic missiles “in several batches”.
The US said the live-fire operations were a gross overreaction to Pelosi’s trip,
Taiwan Premier Su Tseng-chang blamed China for damaging the world’s most frequently used waterway with military exercises, referring to the country as the “evil neighbour” when reporters asked about the missile launches on Friday.
Asian airlines, including Singapore Airlines and Korean Air, re-routed or terminated flights on Friday because of China’s continuing military activity.
Japan launched a diplomatic protest after declaring that five of nine missiles fired towards its territory had landed in its exclusive economic zone (EEZ), while China summoned the Japanese ambassador over Japan’s participation in a G7 statement berating the military drills.
China later canceled plans to meet Japanese officials on the sidelines of a meeting of Southeast Asian foreign ministers in Cambodia, and while top diplomat Wang Yi greeted Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov with a tap on the shoulder, he seemed to ignore his Japanese counterpart Yoshimasa Hayashi. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken is also attending the talks in Phnom Penh.
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Al Jazeera’s Florence Looi, who is in the Cambodian capital, depicted the mood at the meeting as “tense” and that the atmosphere around Taiwan had overshadowed discussions that were expected to focus on the worsening crisis in Myanmar.
Pelosi, who is in Japan on the final leg of her tour of the region, on Friday held talks with Prime Minister Fumio Kishida and addressed the diplomatic storm surrounding her visit in a press conference afterwards.
“We have said from the start that our representation here is not about changing the status quo in Taiwan or the region,” she said, emphasizing that Beijing could not isolate Taiwan by preventing Western officials from traveling there.
“The Chinese government is not pleased that our friendship with Taiwan is a strong one,” she added.
“It is bipartisan in the House and in the Senate, overwhelming support for peace and the status quo in Taiwan.”
Taiwan has been self-ruled since 1949 when Mao Zedong’s communists took power in Beijing after defeating Chiang Kai-shek’s Kuomintang in the civil war, prompting the nationalist government to move to the island.
The US has formal diplomatic relations with Beijing, but follows a policy of “strategic ambiguity” on Taiwan. It is bound by law to provide the island with the means to protect itself.
Beijing has not ruled out the use of force to take control of Taiwan
