BEIJING (CGTN) – Calling a U.S. warship “troublemaker” to the peace of Taiwan Straits, the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) Eastern Theater Command said on Saturday it will maintain high alert at all times.
According to the spokesperson for the theater command Shi Yi, the military has tracked and monitored the movements of the USS Barry destroyer as it navigated through the Taiwan Straits, CGTN reported.
The U.S. has frequently operated such provocative actions, Shi added.
The Chinese military will resolutely safeguard the country’s sovereignty and security as well as peace and stability of the region, the spokesperson stated.
On Friday, the PLA conducted combat drills around the sea and air space in the Southwestern area of the Taiwan Island, a move to “improve the combat abilities of the army forces working as a team”, Shi said.
Similar exercises will be carried out “regularly per the need to safeguard the safety of Taiwan Straits and the sovereignty of China”, he added.
Taiwan announced a $9bn boost to military spending.
Meanwhile, Britain has also admitted it has stepped up its anti-China moves, with the head of British military spy agency revealing that London is “actively recruiting” new spies to be rapidly deployed in Asia.
“We are deploying defense intelligence personnel and we have started into a range of locations around Europe and we are currently recruiting for those that will go further east,” the Daily Mail cited Lieutenant General Jim Hockenhull, the UK chief of defense intelligence, as saying on Friday.
Hockenhull also revealed that he is currently in the process of recruiting fluent Japanese-speaking military members so that they can later be turned into intelligence officers because he “think[s] that is a shorter way of working than it is to take a serving intelligence officer and try and get them to be a fluent Japanese speaker.”