This Thursday, China began an announced live-fire military exercise near Taiwan, the largest such operation ever conducted by Beijing. next to the island.
“Exercises are starting,” Chinese state television CCTV said in a message posted on the Weibo social network shortly after 12 noon (5 am in Lisbon). You exercises scheduled until Sunday and cover six maritime and air zones around the island. These include “real long-range shooting” and “conventional missile tests”. “This is our strong signal to the malign leaders and separatist forces who want Taiwan’s independence,” Gu Zhong, a spokesman for the People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) Eastern Military Region, told CCTV.
Moments after China began the exercise, the Taiwanese military said they were “preparing for war without seeking war.” “We don’t want an escalation [de tensões]but we do not hesitate when it comes to our security and sovereignty,” the Defense Ministry said.
Meanwhile, the Chinese army announced that it had fired several missiles into the water off the east coast of Taiwan. The island authorities condemned the launch of missiles also from the northeast and southeast, as well as the fact that about 10 Chinese Navy ships and several fighter jets crossed the “middle line” separating the territorial waters of China and Taiwan.
Military maneuvers – direct response visit of Speaker of the US House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi to Taiwan, which China regarded as a provocation and incitement to the island’s aspirations for independence. Pelosi is the most important US official to visit the island in the past 25 years. Washington also has an aircraft carrier and other naval equipment in the region.
Although the exercises are now on an unprecedented scale, since the beginning of the week, China has been conducting military maneuvers in the strait. On Tuesday, Taiwan’s defense ministry condemned the incursion of 21 Chinese military aircraft into its Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ), and on Wednesday, when Pelosi met with the local parliament and Taiwan’s president, another 27 aircraft were expected to enter.
To the intensification of military exercises around Taiwan, China added the suspension of imports from the territory of dozens of types of agricultural products and some types of exports, such as Chinese sand.
Chinese minister cancels meeting with Japanese
From Cambodia’s capital Phnom Penh, where he is attending a summit with Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) foreign ministers, the head of European Union diplomacy denounced China’s “aggressive military activity” in the Taiwan Strait. Josep Borrell tweeted that there was “no excuse” for the action and called for calm and restraint. “For deputies from our countries, traveling abroad is normal,” he wrote.
Borrell shared on the social media a G7 ministerial statement asking China to “not unilaterally change state in which resolve differences by force and peaceful means” with Taiwan.
In response to a statement that caused “sharp displeasure” in China, Beijing’s foreign minister decided to cancel a meeting scheduled on the sidelines of the ASEAN summit with his Japanese counterpart, a member of the “Big Seven”.
