Taiwan ‘will never bow to pressure’: Taiwan Premier

TAIPEI - Taiwan yesterday reiterated that it would not succumb to pressure from Beijing after China carried out its most provocative military drills in decades in retaliation for U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s trip to Taiwan last week.

“We will never bow to pressure. We uphold freedom and democracy, and believe Taiwanese disapprove [of] China’s bullying actions with force and saber rattling at our door,” Premier Su Tseng-chang said yesterday. China had “arrogantly” disrupted regional peace and stability, he said, calling on Beijing to not flex its military muscles.

Pelosi's visit infuriated China, which regards the self-ruled island as its territory and which responded with test launches of ballistic missiles over the island's capital of Taipei for the first time. China has also cut off defense and climate talks with the U.S., and imposed sanctions on Pelosi and her family in retaliation.

The Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) military exercises started on Thurdsay. They included missile strikes on targets in the seas around Taiwan proper and aircraft crossing the median line of the Taiwan Strait.

The exercises were set to end yesterday, although Beijing has announced fresh drills in the Yellow Sea between China and the Korean Peninsula, which are to run until Monday next week.

A Chinese state television report said that the PLA would from now on conduct “regular” drills on the eastern side of the median line of the Taiwan Strait, prompting condemnation from the Taiwan Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

The ministry urged China to stop its “unreasonable behavior,” which it said endangers the region, and even common global well-being.

Yesterday, Beijing conducted “practical joint exercises in the sea and airspace surrounding Taiwan Island as planned,” the Chinese Eastern Theater Command said. The drills were focused “on testing the joint firepower on the ground and long-range air strike capabilities.”

Taiwan’s Ministry of National Defense confirmed that China had dispatched “planes, vessels and drones” around the Taiwan Strait, “simulating attacks on Taiwan’s main island and on ships in our waters.” Beijing also sent drones over Taiwan’s outlying islands.

About 10 warships each from China and Taiwan sailed at close quarters in the Taiwan Strait, with some Chinese vessels crossing the median line, an unofficial buffer separating the two nations, a person with knowledge of the matter said.

In a statement late Sunday, the ministry said it had detected 14 Chinese warships and 66 Chinese aircraft in and around the Taiwan Strait

“The two sides are showing restraint,” the person said, describing the high-seas maneuvers as a game of “cat and mouse. “One side tries to cross, and the other stands in the way and forces them to a more disadvantageous position, and they eventually return to the other side.”

Taiwan said it mobilized a “joint intelligence surveillance and reconnaissance system to closely monitor the enemy situation,” and dispatched planes and vessels.

Meanwhile, Taiwan’s Ministry of Transportation and Communications said that flights through Taiwan’s airspace had gradually resumed yesterday at about noon, as most notifications for Chinese military drills near the nation were “no longer in effect.”

Background for the Conflict

China rejects Taiwan’s claim of independence and says its relations with Taiwan are an internal matter and it reserves the right to bring the island under its control, by force if necessary. Taiwan rejects China's claim, saying only Taiwan's people can decide their future.

Pelosi, a long-time China critic and a political ally of President Joe Biden, arrived in Taiwan late last Tuesday on the highest-level visit to the island by an American official in decades, despite Chinese warnings. She said her visit showed unwavering U.S. commitment to supporting Taiwan's democracy.

Speaking at a news conference in Japan on Friday, Pelosi said her trip to Asia was "not about changing the status quo in Taiwan or the region".

Chiang Kai-shek's defeated Republic of China government fled to Taiwan in 1949 after losing a civil war to Mao Zedong's communists, who proclaimed the People's Republic of China in Beijing.