China’s latest drills near Taiwan on Monday were “brazen and irresponsible threats,” a US Department of State spokesperson said on Tuesday, while reiterating Washington’s decades-long support of Taipei.
“China cannot credibly claim to be a ‘force for stability in a turbulent world’ while issuing brazen and irresponsible threats toward Taiwan,” the unnamed spokesperson said in an e-mailed response to media queries.
Washington’s enduring commitment to Taiwan will continue as it has for 45 years and the US “will continue to support Taiwan in the face of China’s military, economic, informational and diplomatic pressure campaign,” the e-mail said.
Photo: Reuters
“Alongside our international partners, we firmly support cross-strait peace and stability, and oppose any attempts to unilaterally change the status quo by force or coercion,” it said.
Separately, a US Department of Defense spokesperson said that the US military was monitoring Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) activity around Taiwan, but did not elaborate.
The two US government spokespeople made the remarks after being asked to comment on the US’ stance on the PLA’s military activity around Taiwan on Monday.
The PLA deployed more than two dozen military aircraft across the median line of the Taiwan Strait and dozens more into Taiwan’s air defense identification zone in collaboration with PLA Navy vessels from 6am to about 9pm, Ministry of National Defense data showed.
PLA activity in the seven days prior to Monday and on Tuesday, when there were 10 fighter jet sorties and one that crossed the median line, was relatively calm, the data showed.
China’s Taiwan Affairs Office spokesman Chen Binhua (陳斌華) said that Monday’s drills were a “just and necessary” move to safeguard “national sovereignty” and peace in the Taiwan Strait.
The drills are also a countermeasure to moves by “Taiwan’s leader” to “propagate separatist fallacies aimed at Taiwan independence and his act to escalate tensions and confrontation across the Strait,” Chen said, referring to President William Lai (賴清德).
Asked about the state department’s comments, Robert Wang (王曉岷), a former state department official, said that it “sounds like relatively strong language to me.”
Julian Ku (古舉倫), a professor of law at Hofstra University in Hempstead, New York, said that the word “brazen” is “a little unusual from the state department as applied to these kinds of exercises.”
“This is a slight change in tone,” Ku said.
“Overall, the state department has not shown any signs of softer language on China or on Taiwan as compared with the [former US president Joe] Biden administration, and probably a little more Taiwan supportive, as in this case,” he said.
During the “Joint Sword 2024B” military exercises around Taiwan in October last year, when Biden was in office, the state department said that it was “seriously concerned” by PLA military drills in the Taiwan Strait and around Taiwan, describing them as “unwarranted” and risking escalation.
Meanwhile, the state department on Tuesday reiterated its long-standing commitment to deterring threats against Taiwan’s security in response to a recent symposium in Beijing marking the 20th anniversary of China’s “Anti-Secession” Law.
While Chinese officials at the symposium reinforced their stance against Taiwanese independence, a state department spokesperson said that US policy remains unchanged.
“We have a long-standing position on Taiwan that we’re not going to abandon, and that is: We are against any unilateral, forced, compelled or coercive change in the status of Taiwan,” a spokesperson said in a separate state department e-mail, citing recent remarks by US Secretary of State Marco Rubio.
However, the threat Taiwan faces from China has escalated, the spokesperson said, adding that judicial guidelines Beijing issued last year direct courts and law enforcement agencies to prosecute and punish so-called “Taiwan independence diehards,” with some charges even warranting the death penalty.
China’s intimidation campaign against Taiwan and its supporters in the US and worldwide has gone global, “threatening free speech, destabilizing the Indo-Pacific region, and eroding norms that have underpinned the cross-strait status quo for decades,” the spokesperson said.
“In the face of such provocative and irresponsible actions by China, the United States remains committed to maintaining the capacity to deter aggressive action and resist any resort to force or other forms of coercion that would jeopardize the security, or the social or economic system, of the people on Taiwan,” they said.
Enacted on March 14, 2005, Beijing’s “Anti-Secession” Law was designed to “oppose and curb the separatist forces of Taiwan independence from dividing the country while facilitating the peaceful unification of the motherland,” as stated in Article 1 of the law.
Article 8 says that “the state shall take nonpeaceful measures and other necessary actions to safeguard national sovereignty and territorial integrity” under conditions such as “the possibility of peaceful unification is completely lost.”
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