BEIJING (AP) — Taiwan said Saturday that China’s military exercises appear to simulate an attack on the self-ruled island, after several Chinese warships and aircraft crossed the median line of the Taiwan Strait following the visit of US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in Taipei which angered Beijing. .
Taiwan’s armed forces issued an alert, sent air and naval patrols over the island and activated land-based missile systems in response to the Chinese exercises, the Ministry of National Defense said.
China’s Defense Ministry said in a statement on Saturday that it had carried out military exercises as planned at sea and in the airspaces north, south-west and east of Taiwan, with a focus on “testing the capabilities” of his land attack and sea assault. systems
China launched live-fire military drills after Pelosi’s trip to Taiwan earlier this week, saying it violated the “one China” policy. China sees the island as a breakaway province that will be annexed by force if necessary, and sees visits to Taiwan by foreign officials as recognition of its sovereignty.
Taiwan’s military also said it spotted four unmanned aerial vehicles flying in the vicinity of the offshore county of Kinmen on Friday night and fired warning flares in response.
The four drones, which Taiwan believed to be Chinese, were seen over the waters around the Kinmen group of islands and nearby Lieyu Island and Beiding Islet, according to Taiwan’s Kinmen Defense Command.
Kinmen, also known as Quemoy, is a group of islands just 10 kilometers (6.2 mi) east of the Chinese coastal city of Xiamen in Fujian Province in the Taiwan Strait, which divides the two sides that split in the midst of civil war in 1949.
“Our government and military are closely monitoring China’s military exercises and information warfare operations, ready to respond when necessary,” Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen said in a tweet. .
“I call on the international community to support democratic Taiwan and stop any escalation of the regional security situation,” he added.
Chinese military exercises began on Thursday and are expected to last until Sunday. So far, the drills have included missile strikes against targets in the island’s northern and southern seas, echoing the last major Chinese military exercises in 1995 and 1996 to intimidate Taiwan’s leaders and voters.
Taiwan has put its military on alert and conducted civil defense exercises, while the US has deployed numerous naval assets to the area.
The Biden and Pelosi administrations have said the US remains committed to a “one China” policy, which recognizes Beijing as China’s government but allows informal relations and defense ties with Taipei. The administration discouraged but did not prevent Pelosi from visiting.
China has also cut defense and climate talks with the US and imposed sanctions on Pelosi in retaliation for the visit.
Pelosi said Friday in Tokyo, the last stop on her Asia tour, that China will not be able to isolate Taiwan by preventing US officials from traveling there.
Pelosi has long been an advocate for human rights in China. She, along with other lawmakers, visited Beijing’s Tiananmen Square in 1991 to support democracy two years after a bloody military crackdown on protesters in the square.
Meanwhile, cyberattacks aimed at taking down Taiwan’s Foreign Ministry website had doubled between Thursday and Friday, compared with similar attacks before Pelosi’s visit, according to Taiwan’s Central News Agency. The ministry did not specify the origin of the attack.
Other government ministries and agencies, such as the Ministry of Interior, have also faced similar attacks on their websites, according to the report.
A distributed denial of service attack aims to overload a website with requests for information that eventually causes it to crash, making it inaccessible to other users.
Also on Saturday, the Central News Agency reported that the deputy head of Taiwan’s Defense Ministry’s research and development unit, Ou Yang Li-hsing, was found dead in his hotel room after suffering a heart attack He was 57 years old and had overseen several missile production projects.
The report said his hotel room in southern Pingtung County, where he was on a business trip, showed no signs of a break-in.
Taiwanese overwhelmingly favor maintaining the status quo of the island’s de facto independence and reject China’s demands to unify the island with the communist-controlled mainland.
Globally, most countries subscribe to the “one China” policy, which is a requirement for maintaining diplomatic relations with Beijing.
Any company that does not recognize Taiwan as part of China often faces a swift backlash, often with Chinese consumers pledging to boycott their products.
On Friday, Mars Wrigley, the maker of the Snickers candy bar, apologized after it released a video and materials featuring South Korean boy band BTS that had referred to Taiwan as the country, prompting swift criticism from Chinese users.
In a statement on its Weibo account, the company expressed “deep apologies”.
“Mars Wrigley respects China’s national sovereignty and territorial integrity and conducts business operations in strict compliance with local Chinese laws and regulations,” the statement said.
In a separate post, the firm added that “there is only one China” and said that “Taiwan is an inalienable part of China’s territory.”