Taiwan Says China's Military Threats Will Encourage More U.S. Support

 

 

Taiwan Says China's Military Threats Will Encourage More U.S. Support

 

China's continuing threats to use force against Taiwan will only increase support from the United States and others, Taipei said this week after Beijing launched a pointed military exercise to protest a visit by members of Congress.

The congressional delegation, or CODEL, led by Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina triggered vocal remonstration before and after they met Taiwan's leaders including President Tsai Ing-wen and her foreign and defense ministers.

In the hours before the CODEL landed in Taipei on Thursday, China's Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian warned the U.S. was going down a "dangerous path" by endorsing Tsai's government, which rejects the Chinese position that Taiwan ought to be ruled from Beijing.

The following day, the PLA's Eastern Theater Command announced a series of live-fire drills in the Taiwan Strait in response to America's "deliberate provocation." At a regular media briefing on Friday, Zhao called the military exercise "a countermeasure" to Washington's "recent negative actions" regarding Taiwan, which has grown closer to the U.S. as Chinese leader Xi Jinping's iron grip on power ushers in a more assertive foreign policy.

In a statement on April 15, the day the CODEL departed for Japan, Taiwan's Foreign Ministry described Beijing's reaction as "absurd."

"The military threats against Taiwan by the totalitarian government of the Chinese Communist Party will only strengthen the Taiwanese people's determination to defend freedom and democracy," it said, "and will also attract more support for democratic Taiwan from the United States and other democratic partners, as well as their emphasis on peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait."

"Democratic Taiwan is not under the jurisdiction of totalitarian China," it said.

 

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