According to state media, China launched military maneuvers around Taiwan on Saturday as a “strong warning” after protesting a stopover by the island’s Vice President William Lai in the United States.
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“The Chinese People’s Liberation Army Eastern Area Command on Saturday launched joint air and sea patrols, as well as naval and air force military exercises around the island of Taiwan,” it said. The official New China news agency quoted army spokesman Shi Yi as saying.
These maneuvers are designed to test the ability of Chinese ships and planes to “take control of air and sea space” and “fight under real conditions,” the official article said.
They should also serve as a “strong warning against the collusion of ‘Taiwan-independence’ separatists with foreign elements and their provocations,” the agency added.
Taiwan has sharply condemned Beijing’s military maneuvers.
The Taipei Ministry of Defense “strongly condemns this irrational and provocative behavior and will dispatch appropriate forces to respond (…) to defend Taiwan’s freedom, democracy and sovereignty,” the institution said in a statement.
William Lai, the frontrunner in next year’s Taiwan presidential election, who has described himself as a “pragmatic separatist,” is Beijing’s pet peeve.
The Harvard-educated doctor-turned-politician stopped in New York and San Francisco after a trip to Paraguay, one of the few countries to officially recognize Taiwan.
The trip has angered China, which considers Taiwan one of its provinces and opposes any official contact between Taiwan and Western countries that would legitimize Taiwanese authorities and undermine its claims of sovereignty over the island.
Washington had called for calm over Mr. Lai’s trip, who Taiwanese authorities said was only “passing through” American soil before traveling to Paraguay to attend the inauguration of President-elect Santiago Peña.
But on Saturday, an official in charge of Taiwan affairs at the Chinese Communist Party Bureau “strongly condemned” Lai’s trip, calling it “another provocation” to “bolster collusion with the United States,” according to New China .
“Mr. Lai’s last ‘stop’ … was a cover-up to sell Taiwan’s interests to secure local election gains through dishonest maneuvers,” the official said, according to the same article.
“Mr. Lai’s actions have proved that he is a real troublemaker who will push Taiwan to the brink of war and cause serious problems to compatriots,” the statement said.
Mr. Lai received the Democratic Progressive Party’s nomination for the presidency in 2024, succeeding President Tsai Ing-wen, whose second term ends then.
During a luncheon in New York last Sunday, Mr. Lai reiterated his intention to uphold the “commitment to resist annexation or encroachment.” [la] sovereignty” of Taiwan.
“At this critical moment, we promise once again, here and now, that no matter how great the authoritarian threat to Taiwan, we will never fear and will never back down,” he told an audience that included officials from the American Institute in Taiwan In fact, it functions as the US embassy on the island.
Relations between Beijing and Taipei deteriorated in 2016 with the inauguration of Tsai Ing-wen as president, with Beijing increasing political and military pressure on the archipelago in recent years.
Military aircraft regularly invade Taiwan’s Air Defense Identification Zone (Adiz).
While Ms. Tsai was meeting US House Speaker Kevin McCarthy in April, China held three days of military drills simulating a blockade of Taiwan.