‘Stop political tricks’ – China

TAIWAN: NEW US VISIT LEADS TO FRESH MILITARY DRILLS

Beijing vows to ‘take forceful measures to safeguard its national sovereignty’.

China said yesterday it had organised fresh military drills around Taiwan, as a delegation of visiting United States lawmakers met the island’s leader after a similar trip by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi heightened fears of conflict.

The unannounced two-day trip came after Beijing sent warships, missiles and jets into the waters and skies around Taiwan, a selfruled democracy that China has vowed to one day seize.

The five-member congressional delegation – led by Senator Ed Markey of Massachusetts – met

President Tsai Ing-wen yesterday, according to Washington’s de facto embassy.

“The delegation had an opportunity to exchange views with Taiwan counterparts on a wide range of issues of importance to both the United States and Taiwan,” it said.

The bipartisan trip sparked a caustic response from Beijing, which said it had carried out “combat readiness patrol and combat drills in the sea and airspace around Taiwan island” yesterday.

“This is a solemn deterrent against the US and Taiwan for continuing to play political tricks and undermining peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait,” Shi Yi, spokesperson for the Chinese military’s Eastern Theatre Command, said in a statement, promising to “resolutely defend national sovereignty”.

Taiwan’s government has accused Beijing of using Pelosi’s visit as an excuse to kick-start drills that would allow it to rehearse for an invasion.

China’s Communist Party has never ruled Taiwan but says it will use force to take the island and bristles at any treatment of it as a sovereign nation state.

In response to the delegation’s visit, Beijing called on Washington to “stop going further down the wrong path of hollowing out and distorting the One China principle, so as not to cause further damage to China-US relations and peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait”.

“China will take firm and forceful measures to safeguard its national sovereignty and territorial integrity,” foreign ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin said.

That decades-old threat was reiterated in a white paper published last week when China’s Taiwan Affairs Office said it would “not renounce the use of force” against its neighbour. –