Beijing/Taipei: Chinese military today announced more drills around Taiwan and China reiterated that it has conducted “normal military drills in waters off its own territory”. Taipei however accused Beijing of practising “war invasions”. Taiwan’s foreign minister Jaushieh Joseph Wu said China has used the United States Speaker of House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan as a pretext but was pursuing its true intentions in a number of ways such as after the drills conclude, “China may try to routinize its action in an attempt to wreck the long-term status quo across the Taiwan Strait”.
Wu described China’s targeted, large-scale military exercises as a serious provocation and further claimed that China has used the drills in its military play-book to prepare for the invasion of Taiwan. “It is conducting large-scale military exercises and missile launches, as well as cyberattacks, disinformation, and economic coercion, in an attempt to weaken public morale in Taiwan,” he said. He also claimed that in terms of the range of its missile tests, China was “clearly” trying to deter other countries from interfering in its attempt to invade Taiwan. “Its rehearsal of anti-access and area-denial (A2/AD) tactics gives us a clear image of China’s geostrategic ambitions beyond Taiwan. In other words, China’s real intention behind these military exercises is to alter the status quo in the Taiwan Strait and the entire region. This has already brought significantly unstable elements into the mix, threatening regional security,” he said.
Taiwan too held artillery drills today and plans to hold them again on Thursday, August 11, 2022.
Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin told reporters in Beijing today that the countermeasures taken by China in response to Pelosi’s “provocative” visit to Taiwan were “justified, reasonable and lawful”. Wenbin said these countermeasures were aimed at sending a warning to the provocateurs and punishing the “Taiwan independence” forces.
“There is only one China in the world, and Taiwan is part of China. The Government of the People’s Republic of China is the sole legal government representing the entire China. This is the real fact and status quo across the Taiwan Strait,” Wenbin said and stressed that the “shared will of all Chinese” and an “unstoppable historical trend” was to achieve the full reunification of China.
“Be it the “US card” or anything else that Taiwan’s Democratic Progressive Party(DPP) authorities and the “Taiwan independence” forces seek to play, they cannot save the “Taiwan independence” forces from failure. Their provocations and lies are futile and will only accelerate their own demise.
Claiming that the collusion between the DPP authorities with “foreign forces to seek independence and make provocations’ was the root cause of the current tensions across the Taiwan Strait, they attempt to change the status quo that both sides of the Taiwan Strait belong to one and same China.
“We want to make it clear to the Taiwan authorities that any attempt to go against the trend of history or to resist reunification with military force is bound to be rejected by all Chinese people and become futile. Such attempts are doomed to fail,” Wenbin claimed. He added: “We will continue to stand with the international community to resolutely uphold the one-China principle, defend China’s sovereignty and territorial integrity, deter and push back any attempt to contain China by using the Taiwan question, and shatter the Taiwan authorities’ wishful thinking of seeking “Taiwan independence” through soliciting US support.”
Top photo: Source Taiwan’s Defence Ministry website
– global bihari bureau
