Taiwan: tensions rising
Military exercises suggest China is getting ‘ready to launch a war against Taiwan,’ Taiwanese foreign minister tells CNN
By Jim Sciutto, CNN, 11 April 2023
One day after China simulated “joint precision strikes” on Taiwan during military exercises around the island, Taiwan’s Foreign Minister Joseph Wu condemned Beijing’s actions in an exclusive interview with CNN and warned that “they seem to be trying to get ready to launch a war against Taiwan.”
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Beijing launched the drills on Saturday, a day after Taiwan’s President Tsai Ing-wen returned from a 10-day visit to Central America and the United States where she met US House Speaker Kevin McCarthy and other US lawmakers.
Beijing described them as “a serious warning against the Taiwan separatist forces’ collusion with external forces, and a necessary move to defend national sovereignty and territorial integrity.”
Beijing conducted similar large-scale military exercises around Taiwan last August, after then-US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi visited the island.
Those exercises included Chinese missile launches over the island, something that has not been seen so far in the current drills.
Taiwan and China have been governed separately since the end of a civil war more than seven decades ago, in which the defeated Nationalists fled to Taipei. Taiwan transitioned from authoritarian rule to a democracy in the 1990s and is now ranked one of the freest jurisdictions in Asia by Freedom House, a US-based non-profit organization.
However, China’s ruling Communist Party claims the self-governing island as its territory, and in recent years, as his power has grown, Chinese leader Xi Jinping has made clear his ambitions to “reunify” with the island – by force if necessary.
China’s exercises also coincided with a state visit by French president, Emmanuel Macron, who was welcomed in Beijing by Xi. [continue reading]
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