BEIJING (AP) — China said Friday that more than 100 warplanes and 10 warships have taken part in live-fire military drills around Taiwan over the past two days, as it announced sanctions on House Speaker of the United States, Nancy Pelosi, for her visit to self-government. island earlier this week.
The official Xinhua news agency said on Friday that fighters, bombers, destroyers and frigates were used in what it called “joint blockade operations” taking place in six areas off the coast of Taiwan, which China claims as their own territory.
The military’s Eastern Theater Command also fired new versions of the missiles, which it said hit unidentified targets in the Taiwan Strait “accurately.”
The Rocket Force also fired projectiles over Taiwan into the Pacific, military officials told state media, in a major escalation of China’s threats to attack and invade the island.
The drills, which Xinhua described as being conducted on an “unprecedented scale,” are China’s response to a visit by Pelosi to Taiwan this week. The speaker is the most senior American politician to visit Taiwan in 25 years.
China announced unspecified sanctions on Pelosi and her family. These sanctions are generally symbolic in nature.
A statement from the Chinese Foreign Ministry said Pelosi had ignored China’s serious concerns and determined opposition to her visit. He called Pelosi’s visit provocative and said it undermined China’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.
China opposes Taiwan having its own engagements with foreign governments.
On the Chinese coast opposite Taiwan, tourists gathered on Friday to try to catch a glimpse of any military aircraft headed for the exercise area.
Fighter jets could be heard flying overhead and tourists taking pictures chanted, “Let’s take Taiwan back,” looking out over the blue waters of the Taiwan Strait from Pingtan Island, a popular scenic spot in Fujian province.
Pelosi’s visit stirred emotions among the Chinese public and the government’s response “makes us feel that our motherland is very powerful and gives us confidence that the return of Taiwan is the irresistible trend,” said Wang Lu, a tourist from the neighboring province of Zhejiang.
China is a “powerful country and will not allow anyone to encroach on its own territory,” said Liu Bolin, a high school student visiting the island.
His mother, Zheng Zhidan, was a little more circumspect.
“We are compatriots and we hope to live in peace,” Zheng said. “We must live in peace with each other.”
China’s insistence that Taiwan is its territory and its threat to use force to bring it under its control has been very prominent in the Communist Party’s propaganda, education system, and media completely controlled by the state for more than seven decades since the sides split amid civil war. in 1949.
Residents of the islands overwhelmingly favor maintaining the status quo of de facto independence and reject China’s demands for Taiwan to unite with the communist-controlled mainland.
On Friday morning, China sent warships and warplanes across the median line of the Taiwan Strait, Taiwan’s Defense Ministry said, crossing what had for decades been an unofficial buffer zone between China and Taiwan.
Five of the missiles fired by China since military exercises began on Thursday landed in Japan’s Exclusive Economic Zone off Hateruma, an island far south of Japan’s main islands, Japanese Defense Minister Nobuo Kishi said . He said Japan protested the missile landings in China as “serious threats to Japan’s national security and the safety of the Japanese people.”
Japan’s Defense Ministry later said it believed the other four missiles, fired from China’s southeastern Fujian coast, flew over Taiwan.
Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida said Friday that China’s military exercises targeting Taiwan pose a “serious problem” that threatens regional peace and security.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said China’s actions were in line with “international law and international practice,” although she did not provide any evidence.
“Regarding the Exclusive Economic Zone, China and Japan have not carried out maritime delimitation in the relevant waters, so there is no such thing as Japan’s EEZ,” Hua told reporters at a daily briefing.
In Tokyo, where Pelosi is wrapping up her Asia trip, she said China cannot prevent US officials from visiting Taiwan. Speaking after breakfast with Pelosi and her congressional delegation, Kishida said the missile launches must stop immediately.
China said it summoned European diplomats to the country to protest statements issued by the Group of Seven nations and the European Union criticizing threats from Chinese military exercises around Taiwan.
The Foreign Ministry said Friday that Vice Minister Deng Li made “solemn representations” about what it called “willful interference in China’s internal affairs.”
Deng said China will “prevent the country from being divided with the utmost determination, using all means and at any cost.”
“Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan is blatant political manipulation and a flagrant and serious violation of China’s sovereignty and territorial integrity,” Deng said. “In response to US-Taiwan collusion and provocation, China’s counterattack is natural.”
China’s Foreign Ministry said the meeting was held Thursday night, but did not provide information on which countries participated. Earlier on Thursday, China canceled a meeting of foreign ministers with Japan to protest the G-7’s statement that there was no justification for the drills.
Both ministers were attending a meeting of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations in Cambodia.
China has touted the foreign support it has received for its response to Pelosi’s visit, mainly from authoritarian states like Russia and North Korea.
China had previously summoned US Ambassador Nicholas Burns to protest Pelosi’s visit. The speaker left Taiwan on Wednesday after meeting President Tsai Ing-wen and holding other public events. He traveled to South Korea and then Japan. Both countries host US military bases and could be drawn into conflict with Taiwan.
The Chinese exercises include troops from the navy, air force, rocket force, strategic support force and logistics support force, according to the official Xinhua news agency.
They are believed to be the largest near Taiwan in geographic terms, with Beijing announcing six exercise zones around the island.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Friday called the drills a “significant escalation” and said he has urged Beijing to back off.
Blinken told reporters on the sidelines of an ASEAN meeting in Cambodia that Pelosi’s visit was peaceful and did not represent a change in US policy toward Taiwan, accusing China of using it as to “a pretext for increasing provocative military activity in and around the Taiwan Strait.” .”
He said the situation had led to “vigorous communication” during the East Asia Summit meetings in Phnom Penh in which both he and Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi participated along with the nations of ASEAN, Russia and others.
US law requires the government to treat threats to Taiwan, including blockades, as matters of “grave concern”.
The drills are due to take place from Thursday to Sunday and include missile strikes against targets in the island’s northern and southern seas in an echo of recent major Chinese military exercises aimed at intimidating Taiwan’s celebrated leaders and voters in 1995 and 1996.
Taiwan has put its military on alert and held civil defense drills, but the overall mood remained calm on Friday. Flights have been canceled or diverted and fishermen have stayed in port to avoid Chinese drills.
In the northern port of Keelung, Lu Chuan-hsiong, 63, was enjoying his morning swim on Thursday, saying he was not worried.
“Everyone should want money, not bullets,” Lu said.