In addition to announcing sanctions against U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi for her visit to the autonomous island earlier this week, China claimed on Friday that more than 100 warplanes and 10 warships had participated in live-fire military drills in the area surrounding Taiwan over the previous two days.
According to the official Xinhua News Agency, “joint blockade operations” were conducted in six zones off the coast of Taiwan, which China claims as its own territory, using fighters, bombers, destroyers, and frigates.
The military’s Eastern Theater Command also launched updated missiles that it claimed “struck with accuracy” unnamed targets in the Taiwan Strait.
In a significant upping of China’s threats to take the island by force, military personnel told state media that they included rockets fired across Taiwan into the Pacific.
The drills are China’s response to Pelosi’s travel to Taiwan this week, which Xinhua described as being of an “unprecedented magnitude.” She is the most senior American politician to visit Taiwan in the previous 25 years.
Unnamed measures were announced by China on Pelosi and her family. Typically, the majority of these sanctions have a symbolic purpose.
According to a statement from the Chinese Foreign Ministry, Pelosi disregarded China’s strong concerns and staunch objections to her travel. It referred to Pelosi’s visit as provocative and claimed that it jeopardized China’s territorial integrity and sovereignty.
China opposes Taiwan’s interactions with other foreign governments on its own.
Tourists gathered Friday on the Chinese coast across from Taiwan to try and spot any military aircraft flying toward the drill location.
From Pingtan island, a well-known tourist destination, visitors could hear fighter planes passing overhead while chanting, “Let’s take Taiwan back.” while they gazed out into the clear seas of the Taiwan Strait.
Since the two sides were split up due to the war in 1949, China’s claim that Taiwan is its territory and threat to use force to retake it have been prominent themes in Communist Party propaganda, the educational system, and the wholly state-controlled media.
The majority of islanders support preserving the current situation of de facto independence and oppose China’s demands that Taiwan reunites with the mainland under Communist rule.
China crossed what had been an unofficial buffer zone between China and Taiwan for decades on Friday morning, according to the Taiwanese Defense Ministry, sending armed ships and warplanes over the middle of the Taiwan Strait.
According to Japanese Defense Minister Nobuo Kishi, five of China’s missiles fired since the military drills started on Thursday landed in Japan’s Exclusive Economic Zone off the island of Hateruma, which is located far south of Japan’s main islands. He said that Japan objected to China’s missile landings because they posed “severe dangers to the safety of the Japanese people” and its national security.
Later, according to the Japanese Defense Ministry, the other four missiles fired from China’s Fujian province’s southeast coast are believed to have passed over Taiwan.
Chinese military drills targeting Taiwan, according to Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, are a “severe problem” that endangers regional stability.
Pelosi, who is wrapping off her journey to Asia in Tokyo, asserted that China cannot obstruct American officials from traveling to Taiwan. The missile launches need to be “stopped immediately,” according to Kishida, who was speaking after breakfast with Pelosi and her congressional delegation.
In response to criticism of statements made by the Group of Seven and the European Union regarding menacing Chinese military drills near Taiwan, China said it summoned European ambassadors stationed there.
Vice Minister Deng Li allegedly made “solemn representations” on what he called “wanton involvement in China’s internal affairs,” according to the Foreign Ministry on Friday.
China, according to Deng, would “with the utmost determination, by all means, and at any cost, prevent the country from dividing.”
Pelosi’s trip to Taiwan, according to Deng, “is a transparent political ploy and a grave breach of China’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.” China’s reply is only expected in response to the collaboration and provocation by the United States and Taiwan.
The meeting was held Thursday night, according to China’s Foreign Ministry, which did not specify which nations were present. China postponed a meeting of foreign ministers with Japan earlier on Thursday in protest of the G-7’s claim that the exercises had no basis.
The Association of Southeast Asian Nations was holding a meeting in Cambodia, and both ministers were in attendance.
Prior to Pelosi’s visit, China had summoned U.S. Ambassador Nicholas Burns. After visiting with President Tsai Ing-wen and attending other official engagements, the speaker left Taiwan on Wednesday. She continued her journey to Japan and South Korea. Both nations might become involved in a confrontation with Taiwan as they both host U.S. military sites.
They are thought to be the biggest geographically held in close proximity to Taiwan, with Beijing announcing six exercise zones around the island.
In response to the drills, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said, “I sincerely hope that Beijing would not create a crisis or look for an excuse to step up its aggressive military activity. We nations of the globe think that escalation is in no one’s best interests and could have unexpected repercussions.
According to American law, the government is required to handle Taiwan-related threats, such as blockades, as “grave concerns.”
The drills, which will take place from Thursday through Sunday, will include missile strikes on targets in the seas to the north and south of the island, evoking the most recent significant Chinese military exercises that were conducted in 1995 and 1996 with the intention of intimidating Taiwan’s leaders and voters.
Taiwan’s military has been placed on notice, and civil defense drills have been held, although overall conditions were quiet on Friday. In order to avoid the Chinese drills, flights have been postponed or diverted, and fishermen have stayed in port.
Lu Chuan-hsiong, 63, was taking a morning swim on Thursday in the northern port of Keelung while claiming he wasn’t concerned.
Everyone needs to desire cash rather than weapons, said Lu.
