China launched military drills near Taiwan as a high-level U.S. delegation arrived for talks in the island nation. The military maneuver involving bombers, fighter jets, and warships began on Friday after Beijing expressed its anger over a visit by a bipartisan U.S. Congressional delegation to the country.
“The Chinese army sent frigates, bombers and fighter planes to the East China Sea and held multi-arms joint combat readiness patrols in the sea and airspace around Taiwan,” German public broadcaster Deutsche Welle reported citing Taiwanese government sources.
As a group of senior U.S. lawmakers landed in Taiwan ahead of their weekend tour of the country, the Chinese military issued a stern warning to Washington. “The U.S. bad actions and tricks are completely futile and very dangerous. Those who play with fire will burn themselves,” Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) said in the statement. Beijing regards the “re-unification” of Taiwan with the Chinese mainland as an unfinished business of the Mao Zedong-led Communist revolution that took place more than seventy years ago.
The PLA’s warning echoes previous remarks made by Chinese President Xi Jinping, who slammed “repeated attempts by the Taiwan authorities to look for US support for their independence agenda.” Taiwan’s assertion of its independence was “extremely dangerous, just like playing with fire. Whoever plays with fire will get burnt,” Xi said October last year.
The Reuters reported China’s latest military drills around Taiwan:
China said it conducted military drills around Taiwan on Friday as a U.S. Congressional delegation visited the island in a show of support to a fellow democracy, with Beijing blaming the lawmakers for raising tensions with their “provocative” trip.China’s military sent frigates, bombers and fighter planes to the East China Sea and the area around Taiwan, the People’s Liberation Army Eastern Theatre Command said, in a statement released as the lawmakers were holding a news conference in Taipei.”This operation is in response to the recent frequent release of wrong signals by the United States on the Taiwan issue,” it said, without mentioning the visiting U.S. delegation.”The U.S. bad actions and tricks are completely futile and very dangerous. Those who play with fire will burn themselves,” it said. (…)The bipartisan group of six lawmakers arrived for their two-day visit on Thursday, in a previously unannounced trip.
The military maneuvers are being staged weeks after revelations that China had advance plans to invade Taiwan but was forced to abandon the operation in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. “A whistleblower from Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) reported that Chinese Chairman Xi Jinping had considered launching an invasion of Taiwan in the fall of this year before the “window of opportunity” closed with the disastrous Russian invasion of Ukraine, the newspaper Taiwan News reported last month.
The Taiwanese government also fears an impending invasion from China. Country’s defense ministry claims that Beijing could stage a “full-scale invasion” of Taiwan as early as 2025. In recent months, the PLA has repeatedly carried out aerial incursions into Taiwan’s air defense zone. In late February, at least eight Chinese nuclear-capable bombers, accompanied by several fighter jets, violated the Taiwanese air defense zone in one such operation.
China, which backs the ongoing Russian offensive, sees Ukraine as a test case for its long-held aspiration to annex Taiwan. In the runup to the Ukraine invasion, China and Russia cemented their military cooperation and formed a de fact defense alliance aimed at the U.S. and its allies. “China and Russia are edging closer to a de facto military alliance,” the South China Morning Post reported in November 2021. The bolster this alliance, both countries “signed a road map for closer military cooperation over the next five years,” the Hong Kong-based daily added.
Russian whistleblower claims China planned invasion of Taiwan this fall (Fox News, March 2022)
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