The visit of Taiwan's President Tsai Ing-wen to the United States last week and her meeting with the speaker of the US House of Representatives Kevin McCarthy angered the authorities in Beijing, who threatened that the matter would not go without consequences.

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 Edited by| Christian Megan 

 Politic   section - CJ journalist

Beijing – April,9,2023 

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   China began three days of military exercises around Taiwan in what it called a “stern warning,” after the island’s president, Tsai Ing-wen, met earlier in the week with Speaker Kevin McCarthy, in a show of Taiwanese-U.S. solidarity.

The People’s Liberation Army said it was holding air and sea “combat readiness” patrols and drills on all four sides of Taiwan, including the strait between the island and China, in what appeared to be a concerted burst of retaliation over that meeting, in California on Wednesday.

The authorities also announced a live-fire exercise on waters near Pingtan, an island just off the Chinese coast facing Taiwan. Additionally, Taiwan’s defense ministry said that as of Saturday afternoon China had sent 71 military aircraft into the skies around the island, including 45 that crossed the median line in the Taiwan Strait, an informal boundary between the two sides. That was a jump from the usual number of such sorties.

“This is a stern warning against the collusion and provocations of the ‘Taiwanese independence’ separatist forces and external forces,” Col. Shi Yi said in a statement announcing the sea and air drills. He was speaking on behalf of the Chinese military’s Eastern Theater Command, which oversees the region encompassing Taiwan.

China asserts that Taiwan, a democracy of 23 million people, is part of its territory and must accept eventual unification and has threatened to use armed force if hopes for peaceful unification are entirely lost. Beijing has accused Ms. Tsai, who has rejected China’s preconditions for talks, of pursuing independence for Taiwan, and Colonel Shi said the exercises were “necessary to defend national sovereignty and territorial integrity.”

 

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• Read more | CHINA COMMENTS ON TSAI ING-WEN'S "TRANSIT" TRIP THROUGH U.S.

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•   Read more.|  “WE’RE STRONGER WHEN WE ARE TOGETHER” TSAI IN JOINT REMARKS WITH MCCARTHY

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• Read more.|  TAIWAN IS PREPARING TO LOSE ANOTHER DIPLOMATIC ALL

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Taiwan’s Mainland Affairs Council said on Saturday that Beijing should not “misjudge the situation, escalate tensions in the Taiwan Strait and in the region, and damage cross-strait relations.”

Ms. Tsai’s meeting with Mr. McCarthy was the highest-level political reception that a Taiwanese president has received in the United States since Washington shifted diplomatic recognition from Taipei to Beijing in 1979.

Since then, Taiwanese leaders have visited the United States only on informal transit stops, and Ms. Tsai has made such visits in the past with relatively little reaction from China. But Beijing — angered over Taiwan’s increasingly warm relations with Washington — has become more vociferously opposed to any meetings between Ms. Tsai and foreign politicians, especially senior American figures.

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