BEIJING: As the US continued its provocation to China by sending a delegation of five lawmakers to China’s Taiwan region, the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) Eastern Theater Command organized multi-unit joint combat readiness patrols and real-combat drills in the sea areas and airspace around the Taiwan island on Monday, serving as a firm response and solemn deterrent to the provocation and collusion between the US and the Taiwan island.
Some Chinese experts warned that it’s highly dangerous that the US government is playing with fire in challenging China on its core interests, and more lawmakers not only from the US but also from other Western countries may follow suit. It’s necessary to impose sanctions on those who have trampled on the one-China principle, and at the same time, the PLA’s military exercises and training activities surrounding the island are expected to become routine until reunification, some experts said.
The reportedly two-day visit of US lawmakers, led by Ed Markey, member of Senate Foreign Relations Committee, came just 12 days after US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi visited the island – a highly provocative and reckless move that seriously trampled on the one-China principle and undermined the fundamentals of China-US relations, leading to a series of countermeasures from Beijing including sanctioning Pelosi and her immediate family members, halting military and climate change talks between the two countries.
Chinese officials strongly condemned the latest visit made by the US lawmakers, which is considered as a blatant provocation that ignored the repeated warnings and opposition from the Chinese side following Pelosi’s visit. The Chinese Foreign Ministry said on Monday that China will take resolute measures to safeguard its sovereignty and territorial integrity.
The latest visit by the US lawmakers showed that the Biden administration has not learned a lesson from Pelosi’s reckless trip that caused growing risks to the Taiwan Straits and turbulences to the global order, some Chinese experts said. It also showed that the White House is losing the ground to the US Congress in terms of taking the initiative and overall control over the Taiwan question, fully exposing its incapacity and decline.
Such a highly dangerous tendency of using Taiwan as a pawn to challenge China’s red line also shows the true intention of the US – to encourage the “Taiwan independence” and distort the true meaning of the one-China principle, some experts said. They also believed that this is a typical example of the US trying to create a crisis to undermine China-US relations and highlight its so-called dominance in the Western Pacific region.
The Ministry of National Defense spokesperson Wu Qian said on Monday that the joint combat exercises and training conducted by the PLA Eastern Theater Command in the sea areas and airspace around the island is a resolute response and a solemn deterrent to the US-Taiwan collusion and provocation.
Taiwan is part of China, and the Taiwan question is purely China’s domestic affair and brooks no foreign interference, Wu said. He warned the US and the DPP authorities in Taiwan that “seeking independence” with US support will go nowhere, and using the Taiwan question to contain China is also doomed to fail.
–The Daily Mail-Global Times news exchange item
