On Thursday, August 4, tourists watch a Chinese military helicopter fly past Pingtan Island, in Fujian province, ahead of massive military drills off Taiwan following US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to the self-ruled island. Pingtan Island is one of mainland China’s closest points to Taiwan. Photo: AFP South China Morning Post
FOR MORE than a decade, first as vice-president and now as president, Joe Biden has told the Chinese that the only thing worse than an intended conflict is an unintended one. The accident he feared may now be materialising. A visit by Nancy Pelosi, the speaker of the House of Representatives, to the self-governing island of Taiwan has enraged the rulers of mainland China, who claim it, and wrong-footed the Biden administration. Some are already speaking of the “Fourth Taiwan Strait crisis”, which is liable to be worse than the…
China is to begin a series of unprecedented live-fire drills that would effectively blockade the island of Taiwan, just hours after the departure of US House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, whose controversial visit this week has sparked fears of a crisis in the Taiwan strait. Taiwan has characterised the drills, which will last until Sunday afternoon – and will include missile tests and other “military operations” as close as nine miles to Taiwan’s coastline – as a violation of international law. Ahead of the drill, it said 27 Chinese warplanes had…
The account has been locked and its content has been deleted. Followers of the account are met with an updated bio that reads: “This account is now closed. Find us at www.parliament.uk.” Advertisement TikTok’s parent firm ByteDance is based in China and MPs have raised concerns about user data being sent to Beijing. In a letter to the Speakers of the Commons and Lords, seen by the Politico website, a group of MPs who have been sanctioned by the Beijing government for speaking out about human rights abuses complained about…
The last House speaker to visit the island did so at a time when both the US and China were keen to improve relations.South China Morning Post
The announcement of six large exclusion zones around the island starting on Thursday, and lasting for four days, is ominous. Beijing did the same thing back in 1996, the last time there was a so called “Taiwan Straits Crisis”. But then the exclusion zones were all well outside Taiwan’s territorial waters. BBC
Now that China has held major live fire exercises of such a scale, so close to Taiwan, why not do that again? Each time Chinese fighter jets fly nearer to the island or in greater numbers, a new standard of “normality” is established. So, if the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) doesn’t fly as close next time, what message is it sending? BBC
The Chinese government claims Taiwan as a province of China and has not ruled out taking it by force. At the end of the Chinese civil war in 1949, the losing Kuomintang government fled to the island of Taiwan, establishing the Republic of China (ROC) government in exile. On the mainland the Chinese Communist party (CCP) established the People’s Republic of China. From the 1970s onwards many nations began switching their formal ties from the ROC to Beijing, and today fewer than 15 world governments recognise the ROC (Taiwan) as…