Image: Reuters Berita 24 English - In a rage over U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's trip to Taiwan, China said on Friday that it was st...
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| Image: Reuters |
China's foreign ministry also said it was stopping talks with the U.S. about fighting cross-border crime and drug trafficking. The U.S. called all of these moves "responsible."
China started military drills in the seas and skies around Taiwan on Thursday. This was in response to the fact that Pelosi was the highest-level U.S. visitor to the self-governed island in the last 25 years. The live-fire drills, which are the biggest ones China has ever done in the Taiwan Strait, will go on until noon on Sunday.
Friday, Taiwan's defence ministry said it sent jets to scare away Chinese planes that had entered the island's air defence zone. Some of the planes had crossed the Taiwan Strait median line, which is an unofficial line that separates Taiwan and China.
The ministry said that 68 Chinese military planes and 13 navy ships had done missions in the strait.
China's Eastern Theater Command of the People's Liberation Army (PLA) said in a statement that air and sea drills were held north, southwest, and east of Taiwan on Friday "to test the troops' joint combat capabilities."
Antony Blinken, the U.S. Secretary of State, said that Washington has made it clear to Beijing many times that it does not want a crisis because of Pelosi's trip to Taiwan earlier this week. The trip was part of a tour of Asia by members of Congress.
"There is no reason for this extreme, disproportionate, and escalating military response," he said at a news conference on the sidelines of ASEAN regional meetings in Cambodia. "Now, they've taken dangerous acts to a whole new level."
Blinken made it clear that the US would not do anything to cause a crisis, but it would continue to help its allies in the area and do normal air and sea travel through the Taiwan Strait.
He said, "We will fly, sail, and do business wherever international law lets us."
Under the condition of anonymity, a U.S. official said that Chinese officials hadn't answered calls from senior Pentagon officials this week. This was seen as China's way of showing displeasure with Pelosi's trip, not as a way to cut off communication with senior defence officials like U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin.
At a press conference after the ASEAN meetings, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said, "I heard that U.S. Secretary of State Blinken gave a news conference and gave some false information and was not telling the truth."
Wang said, "We want to warn the United States: Don't act hastily and don't make the situation worse."
A senior official at the Chinese Embassy in Washington, Jing Quan, said the same thing at a briefing: "The only way out of this crisis is for the U.S. to act right away to fix its mistakes and get rid of the bad effects of Pelosi's visit."
He said that Washington should "avoid pushing China-U.S. relations down the dangerous path of conflict and confrontation."
DIPLOMATIC FRONT
John Kirby, a spokesman for national security at the White House, said that China's decision to shut down some channels of communication was "fundamentally irresponsible."
"There's nothing wrong here that the US should fix. The Chinese can do a lot to calm things down if they stop these provocative military exercises and stop talking "Kirby told the news media.
China has not said that military talks with the U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mark Milley should stop. Officials have said that even though these talks don't happen very often, they are important to have in case of an emergency or accident.
Kirby said that it wasn't unusual for China to stop military talks when tensions were high, but that "not all channels" between the military leaders of the two countries had been closed.
The Pentagon said that China was overreacting and that Washington was still willing to work on ways to talk during a crisis.
Acting Pentagon spokesman Todd Breasseale said, "Part of this overreaction has been to strictly limit its defence engagements at a time when any responsible state would know that we need them the most."
In response to Pelosi's "vicious" and "provocative" actions, Beijing also said that it would put sanctions on Pelosi herself and her immediate family.
Pelosi told a news conference in Japan after meeting with Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida that her trip to Asia was "not about changing the status quo in Taiwan or the region."
"KEEP CALM"
The defence ministry of Taiwan said on Friday that the island's military had sent out planes and ships and set up land-based missile systems to watch ships and planes that briefly crossed the median line of the Taiwan Strait.
China fired several missiles into the waters around Taiwan on Thursday.
Japan's defence ministry, which is keeping track of the exercises, first said that as many as four of the missiles flew over Taiwan's capital, which has never happened before. It also said that five of the nine missiles that were fired at it landed in its exclusive economic zone (EEZ). This was also a first and led Tokyo to protest diplomatically.
Later, Taiwan's defence ministry said the missiles were high in the air and did not pose a threat.
Some Taipei residents, like Mayor Ko Wen-je, criticised the government for not putting out a missile alert, but one security expert said that could have been done to avoid causing panic and playing into China's hands.
Analyst Mei Fu-shin from the U.S. said, "It worked against the Chinese Communist Party's psychological warfare."
In a Facebook post, Taiwan's President Tsai Ing-wen told people not to panic: "Please don't worry, stay calm, and carry on as usual."
Bonnie Glaser, an Asia security expert at the German Marshall Fund of the United States in Washington, said that China might be practising for a blockade by "showing it can block Taiwan's ports and airports and stop shipping."
Since 1949, when Mao Zedong's communists took power in Beijing after beating Chiang Kai-Kuomintang shek's (KMT) nationalists in a civil war and forcing the KMT-led government to flee to the island, Taiwan has been self-ruled.
Beijing has said that its relationship with Taiwan is a private matter and that it has the right to control Taiwan by force if it has to.
