In recent days, Chinese jets have participated in the drills.
On Sunday, China’s military claimed, it conducted combat manoeuvres outside Taiwan focused on land attacks and sea assaults, the second such exercise in less than a month.
The People’s Liberation Army’s Eastern Theatre Command stated late Sunday that its soldiers had organised “joint combat readiness patrols and real combat drills” in Taiwan’s waters and airspace.
China says it has finished nearly a week of military manoeuvres surrounding Taiwan in response to US Representative Nancy Pelosi’s visit to the self-governing island. The Chinese military declared that sea and air operations had been effective, and that it would continue to patrol the Taiwan Strait.
Ms. Pelosi’s brief visit enraged Beijing, which regards Taiwan as a renegade colony that must be rejoined with the mainland – by force if necessary. Taiwan has accused China of carrying out the drills in preparation for an incursion.
The administration of the island rejects Chinese claims of sovereignty and regards itself as different from the mainland. Beijing is attempting to isolate the island on a global scale.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, the highest-ranking US official to visit Taiwan since the 1990s, disregarded China’s warnings not to go last week, escalating tensions.
As part of China’s ferocious retaliation, four days of live-fire drills were followed by anti-submarine assaults and sea raid rehearsals. According to the statement, the People’s Liberation Army would continue to undertake “regular combat readiness patrols” in the Taiwan Strait.
On Wednesday, Taiwan’s defence ministry said that 36 Chinese military planes and ten ships were still flying over the Taiwan Strait.
China’s Taiwan Affairs Office refused to rule out the use of force to recapture the island on Wednesday.
“We will only be obliged to take harsh actions in response to the provocation of separatist groups or external forces if they ever violate our red lines”,the government warned in its first white paper on Taiwan in more than 20 years.
The strategy paper eliminated a prior vow not to send troops or administrators to Taiwan if it is retaken, indicating that Beijing intended to give the island less autonomy than previously guaranteed. According to recent polls, an overwhelming majority of people in Taiwan, a democracy with a free media, oppose any type of unification with Communist-ruled China.
