Taipei and Beijing | Portal and AFP
In another chapter of escalating tensions with the United States, China accused the United States of threatening peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait after a US military plane flew over the area on Monday (27).
The strip of water that connects the island to mainland China has often been the subject of disputes. While Taipei and Washington claim these are international waters, Beijing says it has “sovereignty, sovereign rights and jurisdiction” over the strait the same argument the regime is making regarding all of Taiwan’s territory, according to the Asian giant one Rebel province and inalienable part of its territory.
“U.S. actions are intentionally disrupting and destabilizing the regional situation,” the Chinese military said of the episode, adding that its armed forces remain on high alert.
Taiwan’s Defense Ministry, meanwhile, said it also tracked the maritime reconnaissance and reconnaissance aircraft. According to the agency, which gave no further details, a P8A Poseidon model vehicle passed through the straits heading south.
The Pentagon, on the other hand, has not commented on the case, although it has recently sent warships and warplanes to the perimeter with some frequency.
Like most of the international community, Washington does not have formal diplomatic ties with Taipei. The island lived under Chinese influence until 1949, when nationalists, defeated by the communists during the country’s civil war, fled to the territory and formed a capitalist government there.
Still, the Americans remain Taiwan’s biggest foreign ally as well as its main arms supplier. The two governments have grown closer over the past three years, a time when the Chinese regime began to pressure the island to accept mainland supremacy over its territory.
The visit last August of Nancy Pelosi, then mayor and the country’s top authority, to tour the island for 25 years, only added to those pressures and prompted the dictatorship to maintain military activity around the island on an almost daily basis.
While Taiwan is one of the biggest points of contention between the US and China, it is certainly not the only one. Washington’s military expansion in Southeast Asia is among the many issues that have brought the disputes between the two world powers to a head in recent weeks a list ranging from allegations of Chinese involvement in the Ukraine war to the socalled balloon crisis. , with the approach of Americans from nations like Japan and South Korea, in addition to others in the IndoPacific.
Japan, for example, broke with the pacifist tradition it had cultivated since World War II by announcing a historic increase in its military budget late last year. He called China his “top strategic security challenge” and set a goal of doubling the funds allocated to the sector to 2% of GDP by 2027.
This Monday, Prime Minister Fumio Kishida said his government would buy 400 Tomahawk cruise missiles from the US days ago the Asian country’s defense ministry said it had set aside $1.5 billion for missile purchases in the next fiscal year .