Taiwan has not been intimidated by China\u2019s military drills this week, President Tsai Ing-wen said on Tuesday, after the latest Chinese manoeuvres were denounced by a senior US official as \u201ccoercion\u201d and a threat to regional stability.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
China\u2019s People\u2019s Liberation Army \nsaid its warships, bombers and reconnaissance aircraft had conducted \n\u201cnecessary drills\u201d around Taiwan on Monday. It described them as \nroutine. Tsai said Taiwan was resolute in its defence. \u201cChina\u2019s armed \nforces yesterday sent a large number of military aircraft and naval \nvessels into our vicinity. Their actions threaten Taiwan and other-like \nminded countries in the region,\u201d Tsai said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThese actions only \nserve to strengthen our resolve. Our military forces have the capacity, \ndetermination, and commitment to defend Taiwan and not allow coercion to\n dictate our own future,\u201d she said. Tsai also said the Trump \nadministration had notified Taipei that its pilots could train at the \nLuke Air Force Base in Arizona.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIt enhances their abilities to \ndefend our air space. I want to express my appreciation to the U.S. \ngovernment for the announcement,\u201d she said. Tsai was speaking at a forum\n co-hosted by Taiwan\u2019s Ministry of Foreign Affairs to mark the 40th \nanniversary of Taiwan-US ties under the Taiwan Relations Act, following \nWashington\u2019s decision to ditch formal recognition of Taiwan in favour of\n China in 1979.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The event was attended by a delegation led by \nPaul Ryan, the former speaker of the US House of Representatives. The \nUnited States has no formal ties with Taiwan but is bound by law to help\n provide the island with the means to defend itself and is its main \nsource of arms. Taiwan scrambled jets and ships to monitor the Chinese \nforces on Monday, the island\u2019s defence ministry said, accusing Beijing \nof \u201ctrying to change the status quo of the Taiwan Strait\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
China\u2019s\n Taiwan Affairs Office said Taipei was seeking to \u201cslander\u201d China and \nmislead the public with its criticism of the exercises to provoke a \nconfrontation. \u201cNo person or any force should underestimate our firm \ndetermination and strong ability to defend the country\u2019s sovereignty and\n territorial integrity,\u201d it said. The People\u2019s Liberation Army Daily \nsaid the goal of the drills was to practise a \u201ccombined firepower \nassault\u201d that included electronic jamming from aircraft under the \nprotection of fighter jets.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The paper cited a Chinese military \nrepresentative as saying the exercises were held annually and \n\u201ccompletely within the normal legal rights of a sovereign country\u201d. \nChina has repeatedly carried out what it calls \u201cisland encirclement \npatrols\u201d in the past few years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Ryan said the United States \nconsidered any military threat to Taiwan a concern and urged China to \nstop, saying it was counterproductive.\u201dI urge Beijing to choose the path\n of peace, respect, and civility by resuming dialogue with Taiwan\u2019s \ndemocratically elected administration,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
China has \nstepped up pressure on Taiwan and suspects Tsai is pushing for the \nisland\u2019s formal independence. That is a red line for China, which has \nnever renounced the use of force to bring Taiwan under its control.\n\n<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Taiwan has not been intimidated by China\u2019s military drills this week, President Tsai Ing-wen said on Tuesday, after the latest Chinese manoeuvres were denounced by a senior US official as \u201ccoercion\u201d and a threat to regional stability. China\u2019s People\u2019s Liberation Army said its warships, bombers and reconnaissance aircraft had conducted \u201cnecessary drills\u201d around Taiwan on […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":59354,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[87],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-59353","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59353","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=59353"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59353\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":59355,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59353\/revisions\/59355"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/59354"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=59353"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=59353"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=59353"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}