The escalation of tension around Taiwan continues to grow after the controversial visit of the president of the United States House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi. Beijing announced this Friday in a statement that it will sanction the American politician and her close relatives, in a gesture of unusual harshness against Pelosi, the third US authority and the second in the line of succession of President Joe Biden, only behind from Vice President Kamala Harris.
“Despite China’s serious concerns and strong opposition, Pelosi insisted on visiting Taiwan, seriously interfering in China’s internal affairs, undermining China’s sovereignty and territorial integrity, trampling on the policy of one china and threatening the peace and stability of the Taiwan Strait, ”says the statement from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The Chinese decision leaves the United States government, which had advised against Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan, in a very delicate position and will surely worsen the already deteriorated relations with Beijing.
The White House summoned the Chinese ambassador to Washington, Qin Gang, on Thursday to condemn the escalation of tension around Taiwan and reiterate that the US does not want a crisis in the region, as reported on Friday. The Washington Post. “After China’s actions, we summoned Ambassador Qin Gang to the White House to discuss China’s provocative acts with him,” an official spokesman told the US newspaper.
If the diplomatic tension has crossed a new milestone with the announcement of these sanctions, the military escalation has not lagged behind. For the second consecutive day, this Friday, the self-governed island that China claims as part of its territory has woken up plunged into what its authorities have described as a “sea and air blockade” due to the military maneuvers of the People’s Liberation Army (EPL, the Army Chinese), exercises whose magnitude is unprecedented and which, according to Taipei, have crossed what Taiwan considers a red line. The Taiwanese Ministry of Defense has condemned in the morning the “strong provocation” that in its opinion represents the fact that Chinese ships and fighter planes have crossed the line around 11:00 in the morning (05:00, in Spanish peninsular time) dividing median of the Taiwan Strait, an unofficial border but which until now was tacitly respected. From those ships, at least 11 ballistic missiles have been launched. Four of them have flown over the capital, Taipei, for the first time. The use of these weapons has spread the crisis to Japan, which on Thursday sent Beijing a diplomatic protest after five projectiles fell into its waters.
The Asian giant began these war drills on Thursday that, in principle, will last until Sunday and that include the closure of maritime and air space in six areas around Taiwan and live fire exercises. One of them is located just 20 kilometers from the coast of Kaohsiung, the main city in the south of the island.
Join EL PAÍS to follow all the news and read without limits.
subscribe
“China has launched missiles near Taiwanese waters this morning. This provocation threatens our security, increases tensions in the region, and disrupts international transportation and trade,” the Taiwanese Foreign Ministry said on its official Twitter account.
#China fired missiles into the waters near #Taiwan earlier today. The provocation is threatening our security, escalating tensions in the region, & interrupting international transportation & trade. (1/2)
— 外交部 Ministry of Foreign Affairs, ROC (Taiwan) 🇹🇼 (@MOFA_Taiwan) August 4, 2022
Taiwanese Prime Minister Su Tseng-chang, for his part, has defined China as the “evil neighbor next door”. “(We) did not expect that the evil next-door neighbor would show his might at our doorstep and arbitrarily endanger the world’s busiest waterways with his military drills,” he told reporters, according to Reuters.
Chinese missiles have flown over the capital, Taipei, up to four times. Some city residents, including Mayor Ko Wen-je, have criticized the government for not issuing a missile alert, a decision some security experts say was made to prevent panic. Taiwan’s Ministry of Defense has specified that the missiles flew high in the atmosphere and did not constitute a threat to the population, although it has not given details about their flight paths.
According to the Defense portfolio, more than a hundred fighter planes are flying over the vicinity of the island, an unprecedented war game that the Taiwanese authorities say involves a blockade de facto. Taipei maintains that the ships arriving or leaving Taiwan will have to avoid the areas where the Chinese army is carrying out its practices, a situation that, if prolonged over time, could have an impact on the island’s communications. According to local media, the Chinese drills have affected 18 international air routes on the island and more than 900 flights have been forced to change their route.
The island’s military authorities assert that the Army is closely monitoring the exercises and that it has sent planes and warships and deployed a land-based missile system to monitor the situation. This Friday morning, cyberattacks on government websites, such as those of the Ministry of Defense and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which suffered momentary disconnections, also continued.
Beijing’s forceful response to Pelosi’s visit —which did not last even 24 hours, but allowed her to meet with President Tsai Ing-wen and several pro-democracy activists— has drawn criticism from the G7 and the European Union, which have marked as “unjustified”. This Friday, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken told the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) summit in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, that China’s reaction to Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan is “flagrantly provocative” and that the Asian giant not only seeks to intimidate the island, but also its neighbors. The US Secretary of State assured that “there is no justification for what [China] has done”, although he later tried again to appease China by reiterating that his country “is not looking for a crisis”.
Pelosi in Japan
In the midst of all this escalation of the situation, Nancy Pelosi called this morning “ridiculous” the statement that her visit to Taiwan could harm the island and assured that the objective of her trip is not to change the status quobut keep it. “Our delegation does not seek to change the status quo in Asia or Taiwan”, said the Democrat during a press conference at the US embassy in Tokyo, the last stop on an Asian tour that has also taken her this week to Singapore, Malaysia and South Korea.
Although in Seoul she avoided making public comments about her visit to Taiwan, in Japan, the 82-year-old politician who holds the third-highest institutional position in the United States and is also second in line to succession to President Joe Biden, has not been content: “If we do not denounce the human rights situation in China for commercial interests, we lose all credibility and moral authority to do so in any other part of the world,” he said at a press conference. “China has tried to isolate Taiwan, and may try to prevent Taiwan from visiting or participating in other places, but they will not prevent us from traveling there. Our friendship with Taiwan is strong.”
Pelosi did not meet President Yoon Suk-yeol in person during her brief stay in Seoul, but the 82-year-old legislator took advantage of the visit to visit the Panmunjom Joint Security Area, in the demilitarized zone that separates the two Koreas. In Tokyo, he did meet with the Japanese Prime Minister, Fumio Kishida, who assured Pelosi that his country “has requested the immediate cancellation of the military maneuvers” since they represent a “serious problem that affects our national security and that of our citizens. ”.
The Japanese Ministry of Defense affirms that five of the at least 11 missiles that China has fired towards its territory landed in its exclusive economic zone, something unusual that has provoked a diplomatic protest before the Chinese Government, to which Beijing has responded by disfiguring the Japanese authorities for having signed the joint statement of the G7 and the European Union on this crisis. In that document released this Thursday, the seven most industrialized nations in the world and Brussels affirmed that there was “no justification in using a visit [la de Pelosi] as a pretext for aggressive military activity. China has also protested that statement to EU envoys in Beijing.
The American politician and the Japanese leader exchanged “opinions on the international situation, including the war in Ukraine, the situation with China and Korea and the achievement of a world without nuclear weapons”, according to Kishida himself after the meeting.
Follow all the international information in Facebook Y Twitteror in our weekly newsletter.
#China #sanctions #Nancy #Pelosi #visit #Taiwan