After Taiwan’s President Tsai Ing-wen’s visit to the United States, tensions with China have increased significantly. The People’s Liberation Army of China held major exercises near Taiwan for three days, including “precision strikes” and other attacks on selected targets in the democratic island republic.
Airplanes and warships crossed the center line of the Taiwan Strait by the dozen. The US also demonstrated military strength in the South China Sea, with a US destroyer conducting a sortie around China-claimed Mischief Reef.
The maneuvers in the immediate vicinity of Taiwan, which have been running since Saturday, are a reaction to Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen’s stopover on her way back from a trip to Central America in the United States. In California, the President met with the Chairman of the US House of Representatives, Kevin McCarthy, last Wednesday – according to the protocol the number three in the USA. It was the first meeting of its kind on US soil.
Taiwan ‘purely China’s internal affair’
The exercises were directed against the independence movement in Taiwan, said Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin in Beijing. “It is a serious warning about the provocative activities of the separatist pro-independence forces in Taiwan and their collusion with foreign forces.” He saw a “necessary step to protect national sovereignty and territorial integrity”. Taiwan is a “purely internal affair of China”.
Taiwan’s Defense Ministry reported that 59 Chinese planes and 11 warships were sighted within four hours near the democratic island republic in the morning. 39 planes would have crossed the formerly respected, unofficial center line of the Straits of Taiwan. They also penetrated the Taiwan Air Surveillance Zone (ADIZ), which serves as a kind of buffer zone to the People’s Republic.
US-Destroyer in disputed sea area
During the tensions, the American guided missile destroyer “USS Milius” completed a mission near the Mischief Atoll of the Spratly Islands. As the 7th US Fleet announced, the US warship stood up for freedom of navigation in the sea area claimed by China and other countries. The “USS Milius” then left the area again.
The reef is in its natural state flooded with water and therefore does not allow any territorial claims under the Convention on the Law of the Sea, the statement said. China’s land reclamation and the built facilities did not change that. “Illegal and sweeping claims in the South China Sea pose a serious threat to the freedom of the seas, including freedom of navigation and overflight, free trade and unhindered business.”
China’s threats against Taiwan and its claims to power in the East and South China Seas are also a topic of the deliberations of the foreign ministers of the Group of Seven Big Economists (G7) in Karuizawa, Japan, early next week. Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock is also expected to attend. China’s foreign ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin initially declined to confirm questions from journalists that Baerbock and top EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell are expected in China at the end of the week. There is currently a lively exchange between China and the EU, said Wen Wenbin only.
