BANGKOK (AP/ Al Jazeera) — The Chinese air force is sending fighter jets and bombers to Thailand for a joint exercise with the Thai military on Sunday.
The training will include air support, strikes on ground targets and small- and large-scale troop deployment, the Chinese Defense Ministry said in a statement posted on its website.
China’s expanding military activities in the Asia-Pacific region have alarmed the United States and its allies and form part of a growing strategic and economic competition that has inflamed tensions between the world’s two largest economies.
U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin visited Thailand in June as part of an effort to strengthen what he called America’s “unparalleled network of alliances and partnerships” in the region.
The Falcon Strike exercise will be held at the Udorn Royal Thai Air Force Base in northern Thailand near the border with Laos. Thai fighter jets and airborne early warning aircraft from both countries will also take part.
The training comes as the U.S. holds combat drills in Indonesia with Indonesia, Australia, Japan and Singapore in the largest iteration of the Super Garuda Shield exercises since they began in 2009.
It also follows China’s sending warships, missiles and aircraft into the waters and air around Taiwan in a threatening response to a visit by U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to the island, which China claims as its territory.
Meanwhile, the United States plans to keep stirring tensions by conducting new “air and maritime transits” in the Taiwan Strait in a step the White House says will reflect its response to China’s military drills in the strait amid rising tensions over the self-ruled island.
China conducted its largest-ever military drill around Taiwan, which Beijing considers its territory, during a trip by U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi earlier this month.
Kurt Campbell, the White House coordinator for Asia-Pacific issues and adviser to U.S. President Joe Biden, said despite tensions, U.S. forces “will continue to fly, sail and operate where international law allows, consistent with our longstanding commitment to freedom of navigation”.
“That includes conducting standard air and maritime transits through the Taiwan Strait in the next few weeks,” he told reporters.
Campbell did not confirm what kind of deployment would be made to support the maneuvers, saying he had no “comments about either the nature of our crossings or the timings across the Taiwan Strait”.
He said Washington is set to announce an “ambitious roadmap” for deeper economic ties with Taiwan in the wake of tensions with China over the island.
China considers Taiwan to be a breakaway province that should be reunited with the motherland under the internationally-recognized “one-China” policy.
Under the policy, nearly all countries recognize Beijing’s sovereignty over the island, including the United States, which has no formal diplomatic ties with the territory.
However, in violation of its own stated policy and in an attempt to irritate Beijing, Washington continues to court the secessionist government in Taipei, supporting its anti-China stance and supplying it with massive caches of armaments.
China warned Taiwan against harboring any aspirations of secession from the mainland, including by teaming up with “external forces.”
China’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin made the remarks at a press briefing in Beijing, addressing Chinese Taipei’s President Tsai Ing-wen and her Democratic Progressive Party.
“We warn the DPP authorities in Taiwan that colluding with external forces to seek secession and make provocations will only speed up its own perish and push Taiwan into an abyss of catastrophes,” he added.
The spokesman also said, “It’s the common will of all Chinese people to realize complete reunification of the motherland, and this is the unstoppable general trend of history.” “We are ready to create broad space for peaceful reunification, but we’d never leave any room for separatist activities in any form seeking to secede Taiwan from China.”