TAIPEI/BEIJING (Dispatches) - China said it conducted military drills around Taiwan on Friday as a U.S. Congressional delegation visited the island, with Beijing blaming the lawmakers for raising tensions with their “provocative” trip.
The drills are targeted at the “wrong signal” the United States has sent about Taiwan, a spokesman for the People’s Liberation Army Eastern Theater Command said on Friday, CCTV reported.
China’s military sent frigates, bombers and fighter planes to the East China Sea and the area around Taiwan, the People’s Liberation Army Eastern Theatre Command said, in a statement released as the lawmakers were holding a news conference in Taipei.
“This operation is in response to the recent frequent release of wrong signals by the United States on the Taiwan issue,” it said, without mentioning the visiting U.S. delegation.
“The U.S. bad actions and tricks are completely futile and very dangerous. Those who play with fire will burn themselves,” it said.
China’s Defense Ministry, in a separate statement, said the U.S. visit was “deliberately provocative” and had “led to further escalation of tension in the Taiwan Strait”.
Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokesman Zhao Lijian said on Friday that Beijing has urged the United States to sever all official contacts with Taiwan, which China considers its unalienable part.
“The U.S. should stop official exchanges with Taiwan,” Zhao told reporters, noting that U.S. actions are contrary to the one-China principle and the principles of the three joint communiques between the two countries.
Taiwanese news agency CNA reported that a delegation of six U.S. congressmen, headed by Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Menendez, arrived on the island on Thursday on an unannounced visit for talks with Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen and National Defense Minister Chiu Kuo-cheng.
In response, Beijing said it firmly opposes any official contact between the U.S. and Taiwan.
Lijian said that the U.S. “should abide by the one-China principle and the stipulations of the three China-U.S. joint communiqués” and stop any form of “official exchanges with Taiwan and avoid going further down this dangerous path”.
Prior to that, the Pentagon said it had got the U.S. State Department’s approval of a possible $95 million deal with Taiwan that will include training, fielding, deployment, operation, maintenance and sustainment of the Patriot system as well as associated equipment.
Taiwan has been governed independently from mainland China since 1949. Beijing views the island as its province.