China started on Saturday military maneuvers around Taiwan as a “serious warning” after expressing his discomfort at a stopover in the United States by the vice president of the government of that island, William Lai.
Lai, a favorite in next year’s presidential election and a fervent opponent of Beijing’s claims to the island, stopped in New York on the way to Paraguay one of Taiwan’s last official allies, and made layover in San Francisco on his return.
Contrary to the international contacts of the Taiwanese leaders, the Government of China had warned that it would take “measures firm and forceful to safeguard national sovereignty.
The Chinese army “deployed on Saturday joint air and sea patrols and military exercises by the navy and the air force around the island of Taiwan,” the state-run Xinhua news agency reported, citing the Eastern Theater Command.
Taiwan claimed to have detected 42 raids by military aircraft Chinese in their air defense zone “since 09:00 [01H00 GMT]” on Saturday, adding that eight Chinese ships were also taking part in the maneuvers. Among those raids, 26 fighter jets crossed the median line of the Taiwan Strait, the island’s Defense Ministry said in a statement.
The “control of air and sea spaces”
According to the Xinhua agency, these exercises are “aimed at training the coordination of military ships and aircraft and their ability to gain control of air and sea spaces” and to test their ability to fight “in real combat conditions”.
The maneuvers, the scale of which is unknown at the moment, also represent a “serious warning of collusion between the separatists over the ‘Taiwan independence’ with foreign elements and their provocations,” the agency said.
Taiwan’s Ministry of National Defense “strongly condemned this irrational behavior and provocative”, and announced the deployment of “the adequate forces” to protect “the freedom, democracy and sovereignty” of the island.
China regards Taiwan as a own territory that must be recovered some day, even by force, and in recent years the military, diplomatic and economic pressure on the island has increased.
Last year he held some huge military exercises around Taiwan after the visit to Taipei by then-Speaker of the US House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi.
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In April, China hosted three days of military exercises simulating a blockade operation on the island after the Taiwanese president, Tsai Ing-wen, meet in California with Pelosi’s successor, Kevin McCarthy, returning from a trip to Guatemala and Belize.
United States lcalled to calm to Lai’s scale, which he described as routine.