After three days of tension off the Taiwanese coast, China announced that it had “successfully” carried out its “total encirclement” exercise on the island.
By NJ with AFP
© GREG BAKER / AFP
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Lhe military maneuvers carried out by Beijing off Taiwan have been “successfully completed”, said the Chinese army on Monday, April 10. For three days, the island was the target of a total encirclement by Beijing, which claims this island state of 23 million inhabitants as a province of China, which it has not yet succeeded in reuniting with the rest of its territory since the end of the Chinese Civil War in 1949.
From April 8 to 10, the Chinese military command “successfully completed various tasks” of military readiness “around the island of Taiwan with the “Joint Sword” exercise. It has “extensively tested its joint” combat capability “in real conditions”, the army said in a message posted on social networks.
Beijing ready to “settle once and for all the question of Taiwan”
These maneuvers mobilized about ten warships and up to about 70 aircraft. On Sunday, fighter jets and warships simulated targeted bombardments against the island.
This operation “focuses on the ability to take control of the sea, airspace and information […] in order to create a deterrent and a total encirclement” of Taiwan, had specified the Chinese state television. According to military expert Song Zhongping, these exercises, which have an “operational” dimension, are intended to demonstrate that the Chinese army will be ready, “if the provocations intensify”, to “settle once and for all the question of Taiwan”.
Moscow on the side of Beijing
Tensions between Beijing and Taipei had redoubled in intensity after a meeting, Wednesday, in the United States, of its president, Tsai Ing-wen, and the third figure of the American state. These maneuvers “serve as serious warnings against the collusion between the separatist forces seeking ‘Taiwan independence’ and external forces, as well as their provocative activities”, warned in a press release a spokesman for the Chinese army, Shi. Yi.
Unlike Washington and Paris, who called, respectively, for “restraint” and to be careful not to “enter into a block-to-block logic”, Moscow, for its part, gave its full support to these military maneuvers. , believing that Beijing was the victim of “provocations” from the United States, which supports the island. “China has the sovereign right to react to these provocative actions, in particular by conducting maneuvers,” said Dmitry Peskov, spokesman for the Russian presidency.
The United States responded by sending the American destroyer USS Milius on Monday to conduct a “freedom of navigation operation” in an area of the South China Sea claimed by Beijing. An “intrusion” immediately denounced by China. Japan has indicated that it has taken off fighter jets in recent days in response to those having taken off and landed from the aircraft carrier Shandong.