Image: Reuters Berita 24 English - Chinese planes and ships practised an attack on Taiwan on Saturday, island officials said. This was done ...
 |
| Image: Reuters |
Berita 24 English - Chinese planes and ships practised an attack on Taiwan on Saturday, island officials said. This was done in response to a visit to Taiwan by U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, which caused Beijing to stop talks with the U.S. on security and other issues.
Pelosi's short, unannounced trip to the self-ruled island that China claims this week angered Beijing and led to military drills that have never happened before. Ballistic missiles were fired over Taipei, the capital, as part of these drills.
The Chinese exercises, which are happening in six places around the island, are set to go on until Sunday at noon.
Taiwan's defence ministry said that several Chinese ships and planes did missions in the Taiwan Strait. Some of them crossed the median line, an unofficial line that separates the two sides, in what the Taiwan military called a "mock attack" on the island.
A person who knows about security planning said that Chinese warships and planes continued to "press" into the middle line of the Taiwan Strait on Saturday afternoon.
The person also said that Chinese warships and drones pretended to attack U.S. and Japanese warships off the east coast of Taiwan and near Japanese islands.
Taiwan's army sent out a warning and sent out ships and planes to keep an eye on things while missiles on land were put on standby.
Its defence ministry also said that flares were set off late Friday to scare away seven drones flying over its Kinmen islands and an unidentified aircraft flying over its Matsu islands. Both groups of islands are close to the coast of China proper.
China's military said on Friday that it had done air and sea drills north, southwest, and east of Taiwan to test the "joint combat capabilities" of its forces.
Even though China warned her not to, Pelosi arrived in Taiwan late on Tuesday. This was the highest-level visit by a U.S. official to the island in decades. Her trip has caused a lot of people to try to get back at her, including putting sanctions on Pelosi and her family.
Shortly after her group left Japan on Friday, which was the last stop on a week-long trip through Asia, China said it would stop talking to the U.S. on climate change and with theater-level military commanders.
During a trip to the Philippines, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said that it was "irresponsible" to stop talking about things like drugs and transnational crime, and that security contacts were important to ease tensions. [L1N2ZI050]
Blinken said that if China stopped working with other countries on things like the climate, it would hurt the whole world.
At a news conference, he said, "Suspending climate cooperation doesn't punish the United States; it punishes the world, especially the developing world." "We shouldn't use cooperation as a bargaining chip for things that affect the whole world."
At a press conference on Friday, Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi said that Blinken was spreading "misinformation." He added, "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."
"BASICALLY IRRESPONSIBLE."
John Kirby, a spokesman for national security at the White House, said that China's decision to close down some communication channels 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. Even though these meetings don't happen very often, officials say they are important in case of an emergency.
Kirby said that it wasn't unusual for China to stop military talks when things were getting tense, but that "not all channels" between military leaders had been closed.
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."
After meeting with Prime Minister Fumio Kishida in Japan, Pelosi said that the goal of her trip to Asia was "not to change the status quo in Taiwan or the region."
Japan's defence ministry said that four missiles flew over the capital of Taiwan, which has never happened before. It also said that five of the nine missiles that were fired at its territory landed in its exclusive economic zone.
Kishida told U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, who was in Japan at the time, that he strongly opposed China's missile launches, calling them "a serious problem for Japan's security and the safety of the Japanese people," according to the foreign ministry.
Since 1949, when Mao Zedong's communists took power in Beijing after beating Chiang Kai-Kuomintang shek's nationalists in a civil war and forcing them to flee to Taiwan, Taiwan has been able to run itself.
Beijing says that its relationship with Taiwan is its own business and that it has the right to take control of the island by force if it has to. Taiwan says that only the people of Taiwan can decide what will happen to them in the future.
