The tension between China and Taiwan is going up a notch. On Sunday April 9, on the second day of the “total encirclement” drills on the island, Beijing “simulated targeted bombardment”. Called “Joint Sword”, this operation is presented as a “serious warning” by China. Taiwan’s Ministry of Defense also announced that it had detected “11 Chinese warships and 70 Chinese aircraft around the island”. That is two ships more and one plane less than the day before, at the launch of this operation.
Like Taipei, Washington appealed to Beijing for “restraint”, ensuring that it was keeping its communication channels with China “open”. A few days after his meeting with Xi Jinping, Emmanuel Macron stressed the need not to “enter into a block-to-block logic”. Europe must not “follow” the US or China on Taiwan.
Tensions between Taiwan and China have redoubled in intensity after a meeting on Wednesday in the United States of its president Tsai Ing-wen and the third figure of the American state. The maneuvers “serve as serious warnings against collusion between separatist forces seeking ‘Taiwan independence’ and outside forces, as well as their provocative activities,” a Chinese military spokesman Shi said in a statement. Yi.
The exercise, scheduled to last three days, “focuses on the ability to gain control of the sea, airspace and information…to create total deterrence and encirclement” of Taiwan, said Chinese state television. According to military expert Song Zhongping, these exercises, which have an “operational” dimension, are intended to demonstrate that the Chinese military will be ready, “if the provocations intensify”, to “settle once and for all the question of Taiwan”.
China views Taiwan, which has a population of 23 million, as a province it has yet to reunite with the rest of its territory since the end of the Chinese Civil War in 1949.
