China today launched the largest military high schools in its history around Taiwan, making a show of force in response to US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to the island. They fired “many” ballistic missiles into the waters around the island, the Defense Ministry in Taipei said.
According to a press release from the ministry, “the Communist Party” of China launched “multiple Dongfeng missiles into the waters northeast and southwest of Taiwan since 13:56 (ss: local time; 08:56 Greek time).”
China’s People’s Liberation Army’s Eastern Theater Command said it had completed conventional missile launches and added that controls over the areas where they took place had now been lifted.
Anger
Although Pelosi’s visit to Taiwanwhich China considers a breakaway province, lasted less than 24 hours, angering Beijing as she was the highest-ranking official to visit Taipei in 25 years.
Her predecessor Newt Gingrich had visited Taiwan in 1997.
Pelosi, 82, said the US would not abandon the island, which has its own democratically elected government and lives under the constant threat of invasion by the Chinese military.
In retaliation, Beijing began large-scale military exercises in six zones around Taiwan at noon (local time; 07:00 Greek time) on busy sea trade routes.
“High schools are starting,” Chinese state broadcaster CCTV said via Weibo, the Chinese equivalent of Twitter, and will continue until Sunday noon (07:00 Greek time).
During this period, “ships and aircraft” will not be allowed to enter the fields where live-fire exercises will take place, he added.
In Pingtan, a Chinese island near one of the high school zones, military helicopters flew past in the direction of Taiwan, AFP journalists found.
Taiwan’s military, for its part, said it was “preparing for war” although “without seeking war.”
According to the Chinese newspaper Global Times, which cited military analysts, and as relayed by the Athens News Agency, the high schools that began today are “unprecedented” in scope and missiles will pass over Taiwan for the first time.
“It is the first time” that the Chinese military will launch missiles and use live fire in the Taiwan Strait, the newspaper, known for its nationalist tone, underlined.
“Blocking” the island
Today’s gymnasiums are being held in a series of fields around Taiwan — in some cases just 20 kilometers from its shores — and will last three more days, until Sunday.
“If the Taiwanese forces deliberately come into contact (s.s.: with the Chinese military) and even fire a rifle by mistake, (the Chinese military) will retaliate vigorously and it will be the Taiwanese side” that will be held responsible and “suffer all the consequences,” a img close to the Chinese military told AFP on condition of anonymity.
The island’s authorities denounced the high schools, judging them to threaten the security of East Asia.
“Some of China’s high school sites are encroaching on (…) Taiwan’s territorial waters,” said Sun Li-fang, a spokesman for Taiwan’s defense ministry, calling China’s “absurd” action “defying the international order.” .
The ministry said Taiwan’s military fired a flare overnight Wednesday to Thursday to drive off a UAV flying over Kinmen Island, just 10 kilometers from mainland China’s Xiamen city. He did not specify what kind of UAV it was, or where it was coming from.
For Beijing, these gymnasiums — like others, of a smaller size, in recent days — are a “necessary and legitimate measure” after Mrs. Pelosi’s visit.
“It’s the USA those who engage in provocations and China is their victim. China is in a state of legitimate defense,” Hua Chunying, spokesperson for the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, told the press.
The drills are aimed at simulating a “blockade” of the island and include “attacks against targets at sea, strikes against targets on the ground and control of airspace,” the official Xinhua news agency summarized.
Although the scenario of invading Taiwan of 23 million people was considered unlikely, the chances increased after the 2016 election of the current president, Tsai Ing-wen.
Ms Tsai belongs to a faction that favors a formal declaration of independence and, unlike the previous government, refuses to accept the position that the island and the mainland belong to “one China”.
“Net Scaling”
Visits by foreign officials and parliamentarians have multiplied in recent years, angering Beijing.
Chinese President Xi Jinping, who wants to project an image of a leader who does not bargain on issues of national sovereignty, has sought to further isolate Taiwan in retaliation and is exerting increasing military pressure on the island.
As a result, the Taiwan Strait has become a theater of dangerous tensions between Washington, Taipei and Beijing, which is forced to project an image of intransigence as this year’s Communist Party congress is held.
That congress, which will be held in October, is expected — barring a deluge in the meantime — to re-elect Xi Jinping as head of the party and state for a third consecutive term.
China, however, has no intention of seeing the current situation dragged out, according to experts who spoke to AFP.
The possibility of an “accidental war” is “the last thing Xi Jinping wants” ahead of the CCP congress, said Titus Chen, a political science professor at the National Sun Yat-sen University in Taiwan.
Amanda Hsiao, a China analyst at the International Crisis Group think tank, notes, however, that the high schools that started today represent “a clear escalation in the norm of Chinese military activities around Taiwan and in relation to the last crisis in the Taiwan Straits in 1995-1996′.
“By acting in this way,” Beijing is sending the message that it “rejects any idea of ​​national sovereignty” by the Taiwanese authorities, he adds.
Source: News Beast
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