The Reasoning Behind Military Exercises near Taiwan in China

Beijing, April 8 – China’s military exercises around Taiwan are a warning to separatist and outside forces and a necessary measure to safeguard China’s sovereignty, said Shi Yi, spokesman for the People’s Liberation Army’s Eastern Region Combat Command, on Saturday.

Earlier on Saturday, Xi Yi said that the Chinese armed forces will conduct combat exercises and patrols in the sea and airspace around Taiwan on April 8-10 according to the combat training plan. The island’s defense ministry said it was closely monitoring the Chinese military’s exercises.

“This is a serious warning against collusion and provocation by pro-Taiwan independence separatist forces with outside forces, which is a necessary measure to safeguard national sovereignty and territorial integrity,” Shi Yi said in a statement posted on the Eastern Combat Command’s official account. Area in WeChat social networks.

The rehearsals started Saturday morning, Beijing time.

The situation around Taiwan escalated dramatically after a visit to the island in early August last year by then-Speaker of the US House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi. China, which considers the island one of its provinces, condemned Pelosi’s visit, seeing in this move the United States’ support for Taiwanese separatism, and conducted large-scale military exercises.

Official relations between the central government of the People’s Republic of China and its island province ceased in 1949 after Chiang Kai-shek’s KMT forces were defeated in a civil war with the Chinese Communist Party, and moved to Taiwan. Commercial and informal contacts between the island and mainland China resumed in the late 1980s. Since the early 1990s, the parties have started contacting through NGOs – the Beijing Association for the Development of Relationships Across the Taiwan Straits and the Taipei Cross-Strait Exchange Foundation.