China started two days of military exercises “around the island of Taiwan” as “strong punishment” for “separatist acts” in this territory, announced the state press.
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“The Chinese People’s Liberation Army began military maneuvers around the island of Taiwan on Thursday at 7:45 am (local time),” the official Xinhua press agency reported.
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The Chinese army’s military spokesman Li Xi assured that these maneuvers are “a strong punishment for the separatist acts of the ‘Taiwan independence’ forces and a serious warning against interference and provocation by external forces,” the agency said. news.
Meanwhile, Taiwan condemned the start of military maneuvers by the Chinese army around the island and assured that are “irrational actions and provocations that undermine regional peace and stability”according to the Ministry of Defense.
The exercises take place in the Taiwan Strait, to the north, south and east of the island of Taiwan.
The maneuvers, baptized with the name Joint Sword-2024A, take place after the inauguration on Monday of Lai Ching-te as the new president of this island of autonomous and democratic government.
China, which claims Taiwan as part of its territory, has described Lai as a “dangerous separatist” who will bring “war and decline” to the territory.
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Li said the exercises “will involve patrolling ships and aircraft approaching areas around the island of Taiwan and integrated operations within and outside the island chain to test the joint actual combat capabilities of the command forces.”
“This military exercise not only does not help peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait, but also highlights the militaristic mentality of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), which is the essence of military expansionism and hegemony.” ”said Taiwan’s Ministry of National Defense (MDN) in a statement.
Forced to coexist to avoid war
On paper, the positions are more or less clear: the new Taiwanese president, William Lai (Lai Ching-te), claims the sovereignty of the Republic of China (Taiwan’s official name) and offers “dialogue” to Beijing under conditions of “equality” and “dignity”, something that would favor the “well-being” of its people.
In this context of apparent stagnation, the leaders of Taiwan and China must resume communication channels and “create some type of mechanism for peaceful coexistence,” Tse-kang Leng, a researcher at the Institute of Political Sciences of the Academia Sinica of Taiwan.
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“If the Lai Ching-te Administration continues its lines, and Xi Jinping (Chinese President) insists on the ‘one China principle’, the margin will be very limited. Both sides need to make some adjustments. China is much larger than Taiwan, so I think the largest should rebalance first,” says the expert.
As expected, China deplored the words of the new president, accusing him of promoting “the fallacy of Taiwanese separatism,” and who reiterated that his will to “achieve national reunification” is “solid as a rock.”
In this new stage, which will not be exempt from military pressure and measures of economic coercion from China on the island, Lai must concentrate efforts on “not destabilizing the situation” and on protecting the “sovereignty” of Taiwan.
“We cannot abandon our sovereignty to sit down and talk to China,” Leng emphasizes, adding that Lai “should invent something similar to the ‘1992 Consensus,’” as the tacit agreement reached between Beijing and Taipei that recognized the existence of “ “one China” in the world, despite the disagreement over the meaning of that term.
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