Maximum tension: China conducts military exercises in response to President Tsai’s visit to the United States

China started this Saturday three days of military exercises around Taiwanwhich include evidence of a “total siege” of the island, in response to a visit by Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen to the United States.

The exercises, announced by the Chinese military, included the deployment of “rockets, conventional missiles, ships and aircraft,” state-run CCTV reported.

The maneuvers focused on “testing the ability of the forces to gain control of the sea, air and information” under the “support of the unified command system” for “create a repressive situation where the island is surrounded in all four directions”.

China’s announcement came after Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen met with US House Speaker Kevin McCarthy.

Shortly after the controversial meeting, Beijing warned it would take “firm and effective measures to safeguard national sovereignty and territorial integrity”.

Tsai Ing-wen arrived in Taiwan on Friday after an official visit to Central America and a stopover in California, where she met with McCarthy. China had announced the imposition of sanctions on Taiwan’s representative to the United States, Hsiao Bi-khim, believing that US support for the island’s independence agenda was being sought.

He Taiwan’s defense ministry has condemned the military exercises Chinese, which he described as “an irrational act which endangers regional security and stability”.

Furthermore, he specified in his official account on the social network Twitter that he had ordered his planes, ships and missile systems “respond to tasks” and “monitor the situation”.

Meanwhile, the ministry reported the incursion of 42 Chinese military aircraft into Taiwan’s Air Identification Zone, of which 29 crossed the median line of the Taiwan Strait, which served as China’s unofficial but tacitly respected border for decades. and Taiwan.

The situation recalls what happened in August 2022, when the visit to Taiwan by the then Speaker of the House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi, infuriated Beijing, which responded with military maneuvers around the island to a trip it called a “farce” and “deplorable treason”.

The Chinese maneuvers began hours after the French president, Emmanuel Macron, left China following a three-day official visit in which he arrived accompanied by the president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, and in which both confronted the leader Chinese Xi Jinping, the war in Ukraine.

Beijing has considered Taiwan a rogue province ever since the nationalist Kuomintang retreated there in 1949 after losing the civil war to the Communist army.