Wayne Chang, Sophie Jeong, Heather Chen, Brad Lendon and Eric Cheung – CNN April 8, 2023
Chinese drills near the Taiwan Strait. Click to enlarge
China has started three days of military exercises around Taiwan after the island’s president met the US House Speaker in defiance of repeated threats by Beijing.
The exercises, dubbed “United Sharp Sword,” have been denounced by Taiwan. China sees Taiwan as its own territory and has not ruled out using force to bring it under its control.
The Chinese military’s Eastern Theater Command announced the drills Saturday, describing them as “a serious warning against the Taiwan separatist forces’ collusion with external forces, and a necessary move to defend national sovereignty and territorial integrity.”
“The task force simultaneously organized patrols around the island to create an all-round encirclement and deterrent situation,” the Eastern Theater Command said.
A total of 71 Chinese warplanes crossed over the Taiwan Strait on Saturday. with 45 entering Taiwan’s air defense identification zone, Taiwan’s defense ministry said in a statement.
Nine Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) vessels were also detected.
The drills come a day after Taiwan’s President Tsai Ing-wen returned from a 10-day visit to Central America and the United States where she met US House Speaker Kevin McCarthy.
Beijing had repeatedly warned against the trip and had previously threatened to take “strong and resolute measures” if it went ahead.
China claims the self-governing democracy of Taiwan despite never having ruled it, and has spent decades trying to isolate it diplomatically.
Incursions by Chinese warplanes into Taiwan’s air defense identification zone, a self-declared buffer zone beyond its territorial airspace, occur on an almost daily basis.
Taiwan’s defense ministry said on Saturday it was closely monitoring the situation and would make every effort to defend national security and sovereignty.
“The People’s Liberation Army is deliberately creating tensions on the Taiwan Strait. Besides damaging peace and stability, it also creates negative impact on regional safety and development,” the ministry said.
The ministry had said earlier on Saturday it would respond to the drills in a calm, rational and serious way, and not seek to escalate conflict.
China reacted in a similar fashion when then US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi visited Taiwan in August, launching a series of military drills that surrounded the island and firing missiles over it.
Those drills were the first time China had fired missiles over the island, and many experts saw them as representing a major escalation of China’s military intimidation against Taiwan.
Some of those missiles also fell into Japan’s Exclusive Economic Zone near Japanese islands to the north of Taiwan, a move which heightened tensions between Beijing and Tokyo.
The August exercises also involved dozens of Chinese warplanes crossing into Taiwan’s air defense identification zone as well as PLA Navy warships in maneuvers in waters around Taiwan.
Officials in Taiwan had reportedly been expecting a less severe reaction to Tsai’s meeting with McCarthy because it took place on US soil.
To avoid provoking Beijing and triggering another military crisis, American and Taiwan officials had tried to portray Tsai’s visit as nothing out of the ordinary, citing an abundance of precedents for a Taiwan leader to transit through the US.
But the political significance of Tsai’s meeting with McCarthy is undeniable. It was the highest-level audience a sitting Taiwan president had received on American soil, with an official second in line to the presidency after the vice president.
Their meeting at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library highlighted the strengthening ties between Taipei and Washington, even though they remain unofficial in nature. The US withdrew its diplomatic recognition of Taiwan back in 1979, meaning it does not officially recognize it as a country. However, it supports Taiwan’s ability to defend itself by selling arms to Taipei.
Following the meeting between Tsai and McCarthy Wednesday, the US House Speaker said his country should continue to boost its support for Taiwan.
“We must continue arms sales to Taiwan and make sure such sales reach Taiwan on time. We must also strengthen our economic cooperation, particularly with trade and technology,” he tweeted.
America is unhappy about losing dollar supremacy but it’s their business class who blew it. Had they not been so greedy and short-sighted America could have stayed dominant for 1,000 years and China would still be a paddy field masquerading as a country. They made China the industrial powerhouse it is today, by screwing American workers by sending their factories to China so they could pay low costs and wages.
Those who warned they weren’t just exporting jobs but were exporting the first world and would end up becoming the third world were dismissed as loony lefties. They’re not so loony now. Not so left.
pacific ocean CHINESE !
For what intuitive feelings are worth, mine is that China is the line you don’t cross – it isn’t Poking the Bear that is such a Dam Fool thing to do, but Poking the Dragon.
These have a tradition that precedes Christianity by centuries and it is not a tradition that turns the other cheek , nor does it see Strength in Diversity.
Combine the centuries rather than years that the Chinese look at the span of time and the combination of Practical Self-Interest and the token Communism which dispenses with the need to focus on anything else but Long Term Planning – the Chinese are not interested in what is ideologically correct, merely that which works the best and most efficiently for its purpose –
You know, there is a massive ‘Liberal’ social tendency in Russia but which cannot find anywhere to sow its seeds in China.
The USA is not even starting to put on the brakes to any of its excesses in either Foreign Policy or self-sabotaging Domestic Policy.
Clinton said ‘it’s the economy , stupid’ – but it isn’t.
Education, Family, Technology, Employment – anybody who is not a ‘Democrat’ and therefore maintains long term objectives knows that ‘the economy’ is a rogue’s term – or a Lazy Thinker’s. At best ‘a healthy economy’ is the by-product of a continuity in Long Term Planning.
It just depends, from China’s point of view if they can impose Sound Finance and outwit the Invisible Money Scam.
HANG ON!
‘Wayne Chang, Sophie Jeong, Heather Chen, Brad Lendon and Eric Cheung – CNN April 8, 2023
Can I suggest Hu Smith, Chi Brown. Yu Reid, Yi Farquarson- Williamson
Are these burrsheit names or not?
In any case – God Bless China
I wonder what Taiwan was called when we were there; chonk usually misses off half the consonants
The Way home or face The Fire.
by JAH
The ONLY Survival Plan for all human+Beings.
CHRIST promised, in The Gospel of John, that at His Second Coming, just before The End, He would show people clearly about God.
John 16:25 These things have I spoken unto you in proverbs: but the time cometh, when I shall no more speak unto you in proverbs, but I shall show you plainly of the Father.
He said that just before the Last-Day, when everybody is due to be judged on his/her individual merits, He would come again and publish the Truth of God and enlighten the whole world.
24:27 For as the lightening cometh out of the East, and shineth even unto the West; so shall also the coming of the Son of Man be.
This is also described in The Book of Revelation / Apocalypse, chapter 10, where the Angel gives the apostle, John, a little book and when he eats it up (reads and digests its contents) it is bitter in his belly, but is in his mouth sweet as honey (easy to read, but not so easy to digest and do what it says).
10:7 But in the days of the voice of the seventh angel, when he shall begin to sound, the mystery of God should be finished, as He hath declared to His servants the Prophets.
10:8 And the voice which I heard from heaven spoke unto me again, and said, Go [and] take the little book which is open in the hand of the angel which standeth upon the “sea” and upon the “earth”.
10:9 And I went unto the angel, and said unto him, Give me the little book. And he said unto me, Take [it], and eat it up; and it shall make thy belly bitter, but it shall be in thy mouth as sweet as honey.
10:10 And I took the little book (white stone ch. 2:17) out of the angel’s hand, and ate it up; and it was in my mouth sweet as honey: and as soon as I had eaten (digested) it, my belly was bitter.
This Book is available now and is called ‘The Way home or face The Fire’ by JAH (see Malachi chapter 4). It explains the Truth about God; the True interpretation of The Holy Bible and The Holy Koran; the True reasons why what is happening now is happening and what is going to happen in the very near future in the world. It also explains the consequences involved in taking each of the two paths – The Way home or the way to The Fire.