Taiwan accuses China of ‘harassment’ over live-fire military drills

Taiwan’s government said yesterday that recent Chinese military drills are aimed at intimidating the island and are a threat to regional peace and stability.

China is attempting to “pressure and harass Taiwan and seek to raise tensions between the sides and in the region,” the cabinet-level Mainland Affairs Council said on its website.

“Taiwan’s people are very clear about this and will not accept it. We are determined in our defence of our nation’s sovereignty and dignity and will absolutely not yield to military threats or inducements,” the statement said.

Underscoring the heightened tensions between the rivals, China’s Taiwan affairs office issued a new warning to Taipei yesterday against taking further steps toward formal independence.

“Taiwan independence separatist activities pose the biggest actual threat to peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait,” spokesman Ma Xiaoguang was quoted as saying. “Any plots seeking to separate Taiwan from China are doomed to failure.”

Ma was responding to a question about whether an increase in Chinese air force training flights around Taiwan was a response to comments from Taiwanese premier William Lai in parliament that he’s a “Taiwanese independence worker,” adding that Taiwan is a sovereign, independent nation. Ma offered no details.

China claims Taiwan as its own territory and says the two sides, which separated during the Chinese civil war in 1949, must eventually be united, by force if necessary.

The Taiwanese statement referred to China’s live-fire exercises off its south-east coast on Wednesday, echoing earlier comments from the defence ministry that Beijing was playing up the limitedscope war games in hopes of intimidating Taiwan for political purposes.

Beijing’s hostility makes “the hugest mockery” of its assertion of a spiritual connection between people from the two sides, it said.

Chinese state media said the single-day drills off China’s southeast coast featured an air unit of the People’s Liberation Army ground forces. The PLA said the exercise involved the coordination of various types of armed helicopters that detected targets on the water and attacked them.

It was unclear if the exercises referred to earlier drills announced by China that were to take place in the Taiwan Strait. State broadcaster China Central Television reported onwednesday that the Taiwan Strait exercises targeted advocates of formal independence for Taiwan, saying in a headline on its website, “Don’t say you haven’t been warned!”

China’s defence ministry did not respond to questions.