Taiwan’s Defense Ministry this weekend expressed its strong rejection of China’s joint air and sea military maneuvers around the island, calling them an unreasonable provocation. This would be Beijing’s response to the stops in the United States made by Taiwanese Vice President William Lai in the middle of a trip for the swearing in of Santiago Peña as President of Paraguay.
Before the Chinese maneuvers began, the Xi Jinping government warned this week that the repeated stops on US soil by members of the Taiwanese government harm the interests of the island’s citizens. Pan Xianzhang, vice director of the Taiwan Affairs Office of the Communist Party of China Central Committee, said the consequences of these separatist efforts in Taiwan lead to cooperation with outside forces.
Now this weekend, the Ministry of Taiwan said that it will send adequate forces to deal with the situation and that it will defend the freedom, democracy and sovereignty of the territory with concrete actions in the face of any miscalculation that may occur. Besides, He noted that China has continuously sent planes and ships to harass Taiwan in recent years, harming regional security.
In the Defense Ministry statement, it stresses that the Taiwanese armed forces are ready and willing to fight to ensure national security. The Taiwanese body that during the last 24 hours have registered the incursion of seven planes and seven Chinese military ships in areas around Taiwan.
During this week, the spokesman for the Taiwanese Ministry of Defense, Sun Li-fang, pointed out that no large-scale maneuvers or exercises by the Chinese Army had been detected until Friday morning. “This does not mean that we are going to let down our guard or our determination to be prepared for conflict. Our responsibility is to track any activity by China near Taiwan. We uphold the principle of ‘not fearing the enemy and not provoking”, the Taiwan Defense Ministry noted at the time.
military support
Not only does China take issue with Lai’s scale, but last July the government filed a formal complaint with the United States over the $345 million military aid package it will send to Taiwan. Beijing’s new complaint is due to the fact that these recent diplomatic and economic maneuvers are a threat to peace and stability in the Strait of Formosa, adding to the fact that the Americans had already sold weapons to Tapei this month.
The United States Government reported that for the first time they would financially help the Taiwanese army, which was in the middle of military exercises after a series of exercises carried out by China and Russia in the Sea of Japan, which only increases the heat in the Asian and Western tensions.
The White House spokesman, John Kirby, assured at the time of announcing the United States’ support for the Asian island that his country takes its responsibilities towards Taiwan and the improvement of its defense capabilities very, very seriously.”Nothing has changed about that and we will continue to look at ways to do it.”, he remarked.
With information from EFE
