China launches military exercises to protest Taiwan-US meeting

By: Isabel V.

Dozens of Chinese military aircraft crossed the Taiwan Strait Saturday in a show of anger at the Taiwan president’s meeting with the speaker of the US House of Representatives earlier this week.

The three-day military drills involving more than 70 Chinese military aircraft were announced a day after President Tsai Ing-wen returned to Taiwan following her Wednesday meeting with Speaker Kevin McCarthy in Los Angeles, according to reports.

China views democratically governed Taiwan as its own territory, and has never renounced the use of force to keep the island under its control.

McCarthy denounced the moves on social media. “I am the speaker of the House,” he tweeted.“There is no place that China is going to tell me where I can go or who I can speak to.”

The People’s Liberation Army said it started the combat readiness patrols and “Joint Sword” exercises around Taiwan, having said earlier it would be holding them in the Taiwan Strait and to the north, south and east of Taiwan “as planned.”

“This is a serious warning to the Taiwan independence separatist forces and external forces’ collusion and provocation, and it is a necessary action to defend national sovereignty and territorial integrity,” the Chinese army’s Eastern Theater Command said in a statement.

Taiwan’s Defense Ministry said that it spotted Chinese fighter jets and bombers, as well as nine Chinese ships, crossing the Taiwan Strait median line that serves as an unofficial barrier between the two countries.