Taiwan has accused the Chinese army of simulating an attack on its main island, as Beijing continued the large-scale military drills it began in response to US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taipei.
The People’s Liberation Army (PLA) sent “multiple” warships and aircraft into the Taiwan Strait on Saturday, Taiwan’s Ministry of National Defense said in a statement.
The ministry said it had also fired flares on Friday night to warn off seven drones flying over the Kinmen islands just off China’s eastern coast, and to warn unidentified aircraft that were flying over its outlying Matsu islands.
“Multiple PLA craft were detected around the Taiwan Strait, some have crossed the median line,” the ministry said on Twitter, referring to a demarcation line that runs down the Taiwan Strait and that Beijing does not recognise.
“Possible simulated attack,” it added.
China’s state media have sought to frame the drills as a war plan rehearsal since they began earlier this week, and said the military got close enough on Friday to visually confirm the island’s coastline and mountain ranges.
“Today, my comrades-in-arms and I were ordered to conduct a close-in deterrence mission, in which we looked down at the coastline and the Central Mountain Range of the Taiwan island within visual range,” Hou Hong, a pilot at a brigade attached to the PLA Eastern Theater Command Air Force told the state-run Global Times.
#China‘s PLA released close-up images of the coastline of the country’s #Taiwan region taken during military drills on Friday.
The exercises from August 4 to 7 around Taiwan island serve as a strong deterrent to collusion between the U.S. and Taiwan region. pic.twitter.com/ap7WRWZ8Se
— CGTN (@CGTNOfficial) August 6, 2022
Beijing claims self-ruled Taiwan as its own and has not ruled out the use of force to take control of the island.
The United States, while maintaining formal diplomatic ties with Beijing, has long followed a policy of “strategic ambiguity” on Taiwan and is bound by law to provide Taipei with the means to defend itself.
Relations between Beijing and Washington were already strained – over issues from trade, to the treatment of the mostly Muslim Uighurs and Hong Kong – but the situation has deteriorated further with the visit of Pelosi, who is the highest-profile US official to visit Taiwan in decades.
Cooperation withdrawn
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