“The Chinese aircraft carrier Liaoning has entered the waters near the Bashi Channel and is likely heading towards the Western Pacific,” Taiwan’s Defense Ministry said in a statement. The army remains “on alert, ready to react if necessary,” he said.
The Chinese army, for its part, published a video on Sunday including a small map of Taiwan and affirming that it was “prepared for combat”. The video, posted on social media by the People’s Liberation Army’s Eastern Theater Command, shows missiles, jets, helicopters and warships, and says the Chinese military is ” ready for combat at any time.
Beijing has intensified its military and political pressure on Taiwan in recent years. China has never renounced using military force to regain control of the island, which it considers a part of its territory to be reunited one day.
Maneuvers. It has organized three series of large-scale maneuvers over the past two years, involving its air force and navy to encircle the island, which is managed autonomously. Beijing also sends warships and fighter planes to patrol the surrounding area almost daily.
Relations between Beijing and Taipei have been terrible since 2016 and the arrival as Taiwanese president of Tsai Ing-wen, then of her successor Lai Ching-te this year. Invested in May, Mr. Lai pledged Thursday to “resist the Chinese annexation” of the island or “the encroachment of (its) sovereignty”, on the occasion of the Taiwanese national day.
Beijing, which describes Mr. Lai as a “separatist,” responded by warning that the Taiwanese president’s “provocations” will bring “disaster” for his people. The spokesperson for the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Mao Ning, also considered that Mr. Lai’s speech “revealed (…) his sinister intention to aggravate tensions in the Taiwan Strait due to personal interests of a political order”.
“In the state where it is.” US Secretary of State Antony Blinken warned China on Friday against any “provocation” against Taiwan. “The whole world has every interest in maintaining peace and stability, in preserving the status quo, in avoiding any type of conflict likely to disrupt essential elements of the global economy,” he stressed.
Washington has recognized Beijing to the detriment of Taipei as a legitimate power since 1979, but remains Taiwan’s most powerful ally and its main arms supplier. A senior American official interviewed on Wednesday estimated that China could use the Taiwanese celebrations on Thursday to justify the conduct of military exercises.
Twenty-seven Chinese military planes and nine Chinese naval vessels were identified around the island in the space of 24 hours, from Wednesday to Thursday, the Taiwanese Ministry of Defense said. He said Sunday that 11 Chinese military planes and eight navy ships had been detected around the island in the past 24 hours.
Disputes between Beijing and Taipei date back to the long and deadly civil war which pitted communist fighters led by Mao Tse-tung against the nationalist forces of Chiang Kai-shek. Defeated by the communists, who founded the People’s Republic of China on October 1, 1949, the nationalists of the Republic of China took refuge with many civilians in Taiwan, one of the only parts of the national territory then not conquered by the forces of Mao Tse-tung.
Joy CHIANG
© Agence France-Presse
