2023-08-19 06:26:03
It was because William Lai passed through New York and San Francisco when he flew to Paraguay for the inauguration of the new president Santiago Peña.
China began military maneuvers around Taiwan this Saturday as a “serious warning” after expressing its discomfort over a stopover in the United States by the vice president of the government of this island, William Lai.
The Chinese military “deployed joint air and sea patrols and navy-air force military exercises around the island of Taiwan on Saturday,” the state-run Xinhua news agency quoted the Eastern Theater Command as saying.
These exercises are “aimed at training the coordination of military ships and aircraft and their ability to gain control of air and sea spaces” and to test their ability to fight “in real combat conditions,” it added.
The moves, the scale of which is unknown at the moment, also serve as a “serious warning of collusion between ‘Taiwan independence’ separatists with foreign elements and their provocations,” the agency said.
The announcement comes after the Taiwanese vice president’s trip to one of the last official allies of the island, Paraguay, during which he made stops in New York on the way out and in San Francisco on the way back.
The vice president of Taiwan at the San Francisco airport days ago.
Chinese diplomacy had warned that it was going to take “firm and forceful measures to safeguard national sovereignty” before the trip of Lai, favorite for the presidential elections in Taiwan next year.
China considers this island as its own territory that it must recover one day, even by force, and opposes any international contact by representatives of its democratic government.
Last year he held some huge military exercises around Taiwan after then-US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi visited Taipei.
In April, China staged three days of military exercises simulating a blockade operation on the island after Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen met Pelosi’s successor Kevin McCarthy in California after returning from a trip to Guatemala. and Belize.
The United States had called for calm over Lai’s scale, which it described as routine.
But on Saturday, an official in the Taiwan affairs department of the Chinese Communist Party “strongly condemned” the trip, describing it as “a provocative new move” by Taiwan’s ruling Democratic Progressive Party to “conspire further with the United States.” Xinhua said.
“Lai’s latest ‘stop’ (…) is a hoax he uses to sell Taiwan interests with the aim of making a profit in local elections through dishonest maneuvers,” said this official quoted by the agency.
At a lunch in New York, Lai vowed to “resist annexation” if elected and to continue upholding the basic tenets of the Tsai administration.
Lai has spoken more openly about the island’s independence than her predecessor, who has drawn hostility in Beijing for not sharing her view that Taiwan is part of China.
The Harvard-educated doctor-turned-politician had previously described himself as “a pragmatic worker for Taiwanese independence.”
The condemnation of Taiwan: “It is irrational and provocative”
Taiwan on Saturday condemned the military maneuvers launched by China around its territory after a stopover in the United States by the vice president of the island’s government.
“The Ministry of National Defense strongly condemns this irrational and provocative behavior, and will deploy appropriate forces in response…to defend freedom, democracy and sovereignty” of Taiwan, the ministry said in a statement.
Fuente: AFP
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