Hector Retamal | AFP | Getty Images China launched unprecedented live-fire military drills in six areas abutting Taiwan on Thursday, a day after US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi visited the self-ruled island that Beijing considers its sovereign territory. Shortly after the scheduled start at 04:00 GMT, China’s state broadcaster CCTV said the drills had begun and would end at 04:00 GMT on Sunday. They will include live shots of the waters and airspace surrounding Taiwan, it said. Taiwanese officials said the drills violated United Nations rules, invaded Taiwan’s territorial space and posed a direct challenge to free air and sea navigation. China is conducting drills on the busiest international waterways and air routes and this is “irresponsible, illegal behavior,” Taiwan’s ruling Democratic Progressive Party said. Taiwan’s cabinet spokesman, expressing serious condemnation of the drills, also said that the websites of the Ministry of Defense, Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Presidential Office were attacked by hackers. Chinese navy ships and military aircraft briefly crossed the median line of the Taiwan Strait several times on Thursday morning, a Taiwanese source briefed on the matter told Reuters. As of midday Thursday, military vessels from both sides remained in the area and nearby. Taiwan massed aircraft and deployed missile systems to track several Chinese aircraft crossing the line. “They flew in and then flew out, again and again. They keep harassing us,” the Taiwanese source said. On Wednesday night, hours after Pelosi left for South Korea, unidentified aircraft, possibly drones, flew over Taiwan’s remote Kinmen Islands region near the mainland coast, Taiwan’s defense ministry said. China, which claims Taiwan as its own territory and reserves the right to seize it by force, said on Thursday that its differences with the self-ruled island were an internal matter. “Our punishment for hard-line pro-Taiwan independence outside forces is reasonable, legal,” said China’s Beijing-based Taiwan Affairs Office. Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi called Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan a “frantic, irresponsible and extremely unreasonable” act by the United States, state broadcaster CCTV reported. Wang, speaking at a meeting of Southeast Asian foreign ministers in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, said China had made maximum diplomatic efforts to avert the crisis, but would never allow its core interests to be hurt. The foreign ministers in a statement earlier warned that instability caused by tensions in the Taiwan Strait could lead to “miscalculation, serious confrontation, open conflict and unforeseen consequences between major powers.”
“Comrade Pelosi”
Unusually, the drills in six regions around Taiwan were announced with a tracking map released by China’s official Xinhua news agency earlier this week – a factor that for some analysts and scholars points to the need to play both domestic and foreign public. On Thursday, the top eight trending items on China’s Twitter-like service Weibo were related to Taiwan, with most expressing support for the drills or anger at Pelosi. “Let’s reunite the motherland,” several users wrote. In Beijing, security in the area around the US embassy remained unusually tight on Thursday, as it has been this week. There were no signs of major protests or calls for boycotts of American products. “I think this (Pelosi’s visit) is good,” said a man surnamed Zhao in the capital’s central business district. “It gives us an opportunity to encircle Taiwan and then use that opportunity to take Taiwan by force. I think we have Comrade Pelosi to thank.” Pelosi, the highest-ranking US visitor to Taiwan in 25 years, praised its democracy and pledged American solidarity during her brief stop, adding that Chinese anger could not stop world leaders from traveling there. China summoned the US ambassador to Beijing in protest over her visit and suspended several agricultural imports from Taiwan. “Our delegation came to Taiwan to make it clear that we will not abandon Taiwan,” Pelosi told Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen, whom Beijing suspects is pushing for formal independence — a red line for China. “Now more than ever, America’s solidarity with Taiwan is vital, and that is the message we bring here today.” The United States and the foreign ministers of the Group of Seven nations warned China not to use Pelosi’s visit as a pretext for military action against Taiwan. White House national security spokesman John Kirby said earlier this week that Pelosi was within her rights to visit Taiwan, stressing that the trip did not constitute a violation of Chinese sovereignty or America’s longstanding “one China” policy. The United States does not have formal diplomatic relations with Taiwan, but is bound by US law to provide it with the means to defend itself. China sees visits by US officials to Taiwan as sending an encouraging message to the pro-independence camp on the island. Taiwan rejects China’s claims of sovereignty, saying only the Taiwanese people can decide the island’s future.. ambassador to Beijing in protest at her visit and suspended several agricultural imports from Taiwan.
