Taiwan pledged it won’t succumb to pressure from China after days of air and sea military drills in areas all around the island, with hostilities set to continue while world leaders urge an end to the strife.
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Taiwan pledged it won’t succumb to pressure from China after days of air and sea military drills in areas all around the island, with hostilities set to continue while world leaders urge an end to the strife.
The People’s Liberation Army (PLA) said it conducted exercises around Taiwan on Sunday, with the drills focused on testing the capabilities of joint firepower on long-range air and ground strikes. While there’s been no official announcement on whether the drills have ended, Hu Xijin, former editor of the Communist Party’s Global Times newspaper, said they had been extended.
China also publicised drills in other areas along its coast, including live-weapon firing from August 6 tp 15 in the southern part of the Yellow Sea separating the mainland from the Korean Peninsula. It is a frequent area for exercises. The Maritime Safety Administration also said military exercises will take place in parts of the Bohai Sea in the north for a month from August 8, and warned ships to avoid entering the area. Drills were also held in that region around this time last year.
Taiwan said Sunday’s Chinese drills had again simulated attacks on its main island as well as Taiwanese ships. China also deployed drones near Taiwan’s outlying islands, the defence ministry said, adding it responded by sending airplanes and ships and monitored the situation through surveillance and reconnaissance.
The PLA flew 66 sorties on Sunday, including 22 that crossed the southwest air defense identification zone, the ministry said. Some 14 Chinese warships were detected around the Taiwan Strait as of 5pm local time. Separately, a drone was found approaching the restricted waters of the Kinmen area and was driven away by flares, Taiwan’s army said.
Beijing has carried out its most provocative military drills in decades in the wake of US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s trip to Taiwan last week. It has also likely fired missiles over the island of 23-million people, sent warships across the Taiwan Strait’s median line, and flew waves of warplanes across the US-defined boundary.
“China has brutally used military actions to disrupt regional peace and stability,” Taiwanese Premier Su Tseng-chang told reporters on Sunday.
“We will never bow to pressure. We uphold freedom and democracy, and believe Taiwanese disapprove China’s bullying actions with force and saber-rattling at our door.”
Su said the Chinese government shouldn’t flex its military muscles.
“It is not only Taiwan that suffers,” he said.
“Neighboring countries have protested loudly, and freedom-loving and democratic countries such as the US have strongly condemned it.”
Beijing denounced the visit by Pelosi as a violation of the US pledge 50 years ago not to formally recognise the government of Taiwan, which China claims as its territory. It announced on Friday a set of measures including cutting off defence talks with the US, marking a further deterioration in relations between the world’s biggest economies.
China is engaging in increasingly destabilising action, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken told reporters on Saturday, saying he’s communicated that to his Chinese counterpart Wang Yi. Blinken said tensions between the US and China need to be de-escalated, and he had told Wang that lines of communications between the two sides must be kept open.
“The differences between Taiwan and the mainland need to be resolved peacefully,” said Blinken.
“Countries throughout the region and around the world are very concerned about that.”
Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen’s election in 2016 upended Beijing’s efforts to deepen economic and social ties with the island. Tsai, who hails from the pro-independence Democratic Progressive Party, rejects the “One China” framework and has sought greater US ties to reduce reliance on the mainland.
Pelosi’s visit “demonstrated how the intensity of the conflict has been at that level for a good while now,” Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jnr said on Saturday after meeting with Blinken.
“We sort of got used to the idea.”
China’s military exercises made ships think twice about heading into one of Taiwan’s most important ports, creating potential delays for shipments of electronic goods. Ship owners, worried about possible missile strikes, chose to idle vessels and burn extra fuel until the drills pass.
The Taiwan Strait is a key route for supply chains, with almost half the global container fleet passing through the waterway this year. While vessels are continuing to travel through the strait during the military exercises, they are navigating around the drill zones. The Taiwanese Maritime and Port Bureau on Thursday told ships to avoid designated areas around the island until August 8 in waters to the east of the island.
“It is an issue that can lead to conflict and war to the detriment of all parties involved, especially the people in Taiwan,” Teo Chee Hean, Singapore’s coordinating minister for national security, said in a Facebook post.
“These tensions also have a negative impact on us here in southeast Asia. We hope wisdom will prevail.”
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