These exercises were to be completed on Sunday at midday, even if Beijing intends to lead new ones, “real shooting”, until August 15 in the yellow sea, which separates China from the Korean peninsula.
Le Monde with AFP
China completed his biggest military maneuvers on Sunday, August 7, never carried out around Taiwan, who were a reaction of anger to visit the representative of the Chamber of Deputies of the United States, Nancy Pelosi, on the island which has plunged relations between Beijing and Washington at the lowest for years.
Number three of the United States, M Me Pelosi triggered China’s fury with his visit Tuesday and Wednesday, the most important of an American elected official in Taiwan in twenty-five years. Beijing reacted by suspending a series of Sino-American bilateral discussions and bilateral cooperation, in particular in the fields of the fight against climate change and defense.
In reaction, the Chinese army has deployed fighter planes, warships and ballistic missiles. Analysts consider this maneuver as a simulation of blockade and invasion of Taiwan.
Sunday, the army conducted “practical exercises jointly at sea and in the airspace surrounding the island of Taiwan”, said the command is of the Chinese army, which oversees the eastern maritime space of the oriental space of Country – and, therefore, Taiwan. These exercises aimed at “testing the joint firepower in the field and long-range air strike capacities”, he added.
The Taiwanese Ministry of Defense has confirmed that China had sent “planes, ships and drones” around the Strait, “to simulate attacks against the main island of Taiwan and against boats in our waters” .
Six of the seven “temporary danger zones” raised
These vast maneuvers had to end at midday, even if Beijing intends to carry out new exercises “real shooting” until August 15 in the yellow sea, which separates China from the Korean peninsula.
The Taiwanese Ministry of Transport announced that at noon six of the seven “temporary danger zones” that China had asked the airlines to avoid returned to normal, which indicates that the exercises were coming to an end . “The flights and navigations concerned can resume gradually,” he said in a statement. The seventh zone, in the waters east of Taiwan, will remain to be avoided until Monday morning, according to the same source. On the Chinese side, the Ministry of Defense did not respond to a request for confirmation at the end of the maneuvers.
To prove how much she had approached the Taiwanese coasts, the Chinese army published a photo on Saturday, taken from her since one of her military ships, where we see a building of the Taiwanese navy Just a few hundred meters away. This snapshot could be closest to the Taiwanese coast never taken by the forces of continental China. The Chinese army has also published the video of one of its fighter plane pilots showing, from its cockpit in full flight, the coast and the Taiwan mountains. According to Chinese public television CCTV, missiles flew over Taiwan this week during the exercises around the island – which would constitute a first.
Taipei has continued to condemn these maneuvers in recent days, castigating his “malicious neighbor” and calling on Beijing on Saturday to “stop immediately raising tension and carrying out provocative actions aimed at intimidating the Taiwanese people”.
The magnitude of the maneuvers and the Beijing decision to withdraw from crucial bilateral dialogues on the climate and the defense have triggered a rain of convictions by the United States and their allies.
The American Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, denounced on Saturday in Manila the “total disproportion” of the Chinese reaction. China should not take discussions on issues such as climate change, because this “does not punish the United States, but the whole world,” he added.
The UN Secretary General, Antonio Guterres, has warned that it “is impossible to solve the most pressing problems in the world without effective dialogue and cooperation between the two countries”.