Taiwan military says it has right to counter attack threats
China Daily newspaper says United States was trying to use Taiwan to contain China but nobody should underestimate its determination to assert its sovereignty over the island
Taiwan said on Monday its armed forces have the right to self-defence and counter atack amid “harassment and threats,” in an apparent warning to China, which last week sent numerous jets across the mid-line of the sensitive Taiwan Strait.
Tensions have sharply spiked in recent months between Taipei and Beijing, which claims democratically run Taiwan as its own territory, to be taken by force if needed.
Chinese aircrat crossed the mid-line to enter the island’s air defence identification zone on Friday and Saturday, prompting Taiwan to scramble jets to intercept them, and President Tsai Ing-wen to call China a threat to the region.
In a statement, Taiwan’s defence ministry said it had “clearly defined” procedures for the island’s first response amid “high frequency of harassment and threats from the enemy’s warships and aircrat this year.”
It said Taiwan had the right to “self-defence and to counter atack” and followed the guideline of “no escalation of conflict and no triggering incidents.”
Taiwan would not provoke, but it was also
“not afraid of the enemy,” it added.
Taiwanese and Chinese combat aircrat normally observe the mid-line of the Taiwan Strait and do not cross it, although there is no official agreement between Taipei and Beijing on doing so, and the rule is observed unofficially.
“Taiwan is an inseparable part of Chinese territory,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin told reporters in Beijing.
“The so-called mid-line of the Strait does not exist.” Since 2016 Taiwan has reported only five Chinese incursions across the line, including the two last week.
The drills came as Beijing expressed anger at the visit of a senior US official to Taipei.
On Monday, the official China Daily newspaper said the United States was trying to use Taiwan to contain China but nobody should underestimate its determination to assert its sovereignty over the island.
“The US administration should not be blinkered in its desperation to contain the peaceful rise of China and indulge in the US addiction to its hegemony,” it said in an editorial.
China has been angered by stepped-up US support for Taiwan, including two visits in as many months by top officials, one in August by Health Secretary Alex Azar and the other last week by Keith Krach, undersecretary for economic affairs.
The United States, which has no official diplomatic ties with the island but is its strongest international backer, is also planning major new arms sales to Taiwan.
China this month held rare large-scale drills near Taiwan, which Taipei called serious provocation. China said the exercise was a necessity to protect its sovereignty.
China’s air force has released a video showing nuclear-capable H-6 bombers carrying out a simulated atack on what appears to be Andersen Air Force Base on the US Pacific island of Guam, as regional tensions continue to rise.
The video, released on Saturday on People’s Liberation Army Air Force Weibo account, came as China carried out a second day of drills near Chinese-claimed Taiwan, to express Beijing’s anger at the visit of a senior US State Department official to Taipei. Guam is home to major US military facilities, including the air base, which would be key to responding to any conflict in the Asia Pacific region.
The Chinese air force’s two minute and 15 second video, set to solemn, dramatic music like a trailer for a Hollywood movie, shows H-6 bombers taking off from a desert base.
The video is called “The god of war H-6K goes on the atack!” Halfway through, a pilot presses a buton and looses off a missile at an unnamed seaside runway.
The missile homes in on the runway, a satellite image of which is shown that looks exactly like the layout of Andersen, though it is not named.
The music suddenly stops as images of the ground shaking appear, following by aerial views of an explosion.
“We are the defenders of the motherland’s aerial security; we have the confidence and ability to always defend the security of the motherland’s skies,” the PLAAF wrote in a brief description for the video.