Home ›› 05 Aug 2022 ›› Front
China launched unprecedented live-fire military drills in six areas that ring Taiwan on Thursday, a day after a visit by US House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi to the self-ruled island that Beijing regards as its sovereign territory.
Soon after the scheduled start at 0400 GMT, China’s state broadcaster CCTV said the drills had begun and would end at 0400 GMT on Sunday. They would include live firing on the waters and in the airspace surrounding Taiwan, it said.
Taiwan officials have said the drills violate United Nations rules, invade Taiwan’s territorial space and are a direct challenge to free air and sea navigation.
China is conducting drills on the busiest international waterways and aviation routes and that is “irresponsible, illegitimate behaviour,” Taiwan’s ruling Democratic Progressive Party said.
Taiwan’s cabinet spokesman, expressing serious condemnation of the drills, said also that websites of the defence ministry, the foreign ministry and the presidential office were attacked by hackers.
On Wednesday night, just hours after Pelosi left for South Korea, unidentified aircraft, probably drones, flew above the area of Taiwan’s outlying Kinmen islands near the mainland coast, Taiwan’s defence ministry said.
Major General Chang Zone-sung of the army’s Kinmen Defence Command told Reuters that the drones came in a pair and flew into the Kinmen area twice on Wednesday night, at around 9:00pm (1300 GMT). and 10:00pm.
“We immediately fired flares to issue warnings and to drive them away. After that, they turned around. They came into our restricted area and that’s why we dispersed them,” he said.
China, which claims Taiwan as its own territory and reserves the right to take it by force, said on Thursday its differences with the self-ruled island were an internal affair.
“Our punishment of pro-Taiwan independence diehards, external forces is reasonable, lawful,” China’s Beijing-based Taiwan Affairs Office said.
China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi called Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan a “manic, irresponsible and highly irrational” act bu the United States, state broadcaster CCTV reported.
Wang, speaking at a meeting of Southeast Asian foreign ministers in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, said China had made the utmost diplomatic effort to avert crisis, but would never allow its core interests to be hurt.
The foreign ministers in a statement had earlier warned that volatility caused by tensions in the Taiwan Strait could lead to “miscalculation, serious confrontation, open conflicts and unpredictable consequences among major powers”.
Comrade pelosi
Unusually, the drills in six areas around Taiwan were announced with a locator map circulated by China’s official Xinhua news agency earlier this week - a factor that for some analysts and scholars shows the need to play to both domestic and foreign audiences.
On Thursday, the top eight trending items on China’s Twitter-like Weibo service were related to Taiwan, with most expressing support for the drills or fury at Pelosi.
“Let’s reunite the motherland,” several users wrote.
China scolded foreign ministers of the Group of Seven (G7) nations on Thursday for telling Beijing not to use a visit by US House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi to Taiwan as “pretext for aggressive military activity in the Taiwan Strait”.
China responded to Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan earlier this week by ordering live fire military drills in the waters surrounding the self-governed island, which Beijing regards as its sovereign territory.
A G7 foreign ministers joint statement warned that China’s escalatory response risked increasing tensions and destabilising the region and said it was routine for legislators from their countries to travel internationally.
Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi rejected their statement, and chided them for ignoring the provocation that had come from the US side.
“It groundlessly criticises China for taking such measures, which are reasonable and legitimate steps to safeguard its sovereignty and territorial integrity,” Wang said in a statement issued by his ministry.
“From where have they received such a prerogative? Who has given them such qualification to? To shield the infringer of rights and to accuse their defenders - how inexplicable!”
The G7 statement had aroused “great indignation” among the Chinese people, he said.
“Today’s China is no longer the China of the 19th century. History should not repeat itself, and it will never repeat itself!”
Due to the statement from G7, which Japan is part of, China cancelled a meeting between Wang and his Japanese counterpart Yoshimasa Hayashi on the sidelines of ASEAN events in Cambodia, said Hua Chunying, spokesperson at the Chinese foreign ministry.
Hua added that if other G7 nations follow in the footsteps of the United States over the Taiwan issue, then that means they themselves have no independence in their diplomacy and policies.
Meanwhile, Southeast Asia’s regional bloc ASEAN warned on Thursday that an increase in international and regional volatility could lead to “miscalculation, serious confrontation, open conflicts and unpredictable consequences among major powers”.
The Association of Southeast Asian Nations made the remarks in a statement from foreign ministers after the bloc’s chair Cambodia had called on all sides to de-escalate tensions over Taiwan.
