The Taiwanese army carried out new live-fire drills on Thursday after China, which continues its threats to take control of the island, culminated its largest military exercises around it.
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Lou Woei-jye, a spokesman for Taiwan’s Eighth Army Corps, told AFP his forces fired shells and flares as part of a defensive drill on Thursday morning.
The exercise deployed in the southernmost part of the island, Pingtung, began at 0830 local time (0030 GMT) and lasted one hour, he said. On Tuesday he had already made another in the same place.
China reacted furiously to the trip to Taiwan of the speaker of the United States House of Representativess, Nancy Pelosi, the highest-ranking American visit in decades to this self-governing island.
The Chinese military responded with several days of sea and air exercises around Taiwan that have brought tensions to their highest level in years. Taiwan has accused China of taking advantage of Pelosi’s visit to rehearse a possible invasion of the island.
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The island’s military downplayed its military exercises, saying they were scheduled in advance before those carried out by China. “We have two objectives with the maneuvers, the first is to certify the adequate conditions of artillery and its maintenance, and the second is to confirm last year’s results,” added Lou.
war preparations
The latest exercise comes after China announced the end of its exercises, saying its forces have “successfully completed various tasks” in the Taiwan Strait.
In the same announcement, China said it would “continue to conduct military training and prepare for war.” In a white paper released Wednesday by the Taiwan Affairs Office of the Chinese State Council, the authors say Beijing “will not renounce” the use of force and reserves “the option to take all necessary measures.”
We are ready to create a vast space for peaceful reunification, but we will leave no room for separatist activities of any kind,” states the white paper. The last time China published a white paper on Taiwan was in 2000.
The Taiwanese Foreign Ministry spoke out on Thursday against the “one country, two systems” model that Beijing is proposing for the island. “The entire Chinese statement goes absolutely against the status quo (between China and Taiwan) and its reality,” ministry spokeswoman Joanne Ou told a news conference.
“China uses the visit of… Nancy Pelosi as an excuse to destroy the status quo and uses the opportunity to make trouble, trying to create a new normal to intimidate the Taiwanese people,” he added.
For its part, the Taiwanese Affairs Office of the Communist Party of China said in a statement Thursday that (Taipei’s) “rebellious actions are a slap in the face and cannot stop the historical trend of reunification” with mainland China.
In Washington, Nancy Pelosi defended her visit on Wednesday by stating that she feels “very proud” of his delegation and that China used his presence as a “pretext” to launch its military exercises.
“We will not allow China to isolate Taiwan,” Pelosi told reporters. Taiwan regularly holds military exercises in which it simulates defense against a Chinese invasion, and in July it rehearsed repelling a seaborne attack in a “joint interdiction operation.”
After the Chinese military announced the end of its exercises, the Taiwanese army said it would “adjust how we move our forces … without lowering our guard.” Since the 1990s, Taiwan has gone from being an autocracy to a well-established democracy and has seen the emergence of a distinctive Taiwanese identity.
Relations between the two sides have deteriorated since 2016, when current President Tsai Ing-wen, whose Democratic Progressive Party does not consider Taiwan to be part of China, came to power.
AFP
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