China’s military drills around Taiwan are “incompatible” with peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait, Japanese Minister of Foreign Affairs Takeshi Iwaya said during a meeting with his Chinese counterpart Wang Yi (王毅) on Thursday.
“Peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait is important for the international community, including Japan,” Iwaya told Wang during a meeting on the sidelines of the ASEAN-related Foreign Ministers’ Meetings in Kuala Lumpur.
“China’s large-scale military drills around Taiwan are incompatible with this,” a statement released by the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs on Thursday cited Iwaya as saying.
Photo: Reuters
The Foreign Ministers’ Meetings are a series of diplomatic gatherings of ASEAN member states and key partner countries to discuss regional and international issues.
During the Japan-China Foreign Ministers’ Meeting, Iwaya also voiced opposition to attempts to unilaterally change the “status quo” by force or coercion, and expressed Tokyo’s “serious concern” over the situation in the South China Sea.
On Friday evening, Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson Hsiao Kuang-wei (蕭光偉) echoed Iwaya’s concerns, saying that China’s repeated use of pretexts to escalate coercion and military intimidation against Taiwan posed a serious threat to peace and security across the Taiwan Strait and the surrounding region.
Such moves by China have drawn the attention of the international community, Hsiao said, adding that Japanese officials have expressed grave concern over security in the Taiwan Strait and the region to their Chinese counterparts on multiple occasions over the past few years.
He cited as an example the meeting between Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) and Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba during the APEC summit in Lima in November last year, as well as the Japan-China Foreign Ministers’ Meeting held in Tokyo in March.
Japan’s actions demonstrate its consistent stance of “speaking out when necessary” and its firm support for peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait, Hsiao said.
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