China Blacklists U.S. Entities in Retaliation

Taiwan Provocations Continue as U.S. Official Ends Visit

Date: 19 September 2020 - 21:40

News ID: ۸۲۹۶۴

TAIPEI (Dispatches) -- Taiwan’s air force on Saturday scrambled its jet fighters for a second consecutive day after numerous Chinese warplanes allegedly crossed the sensitive midline of the Taiwan Strait.
Taiwan’s Defense Ministry said 19 Chinese aircraft took part in the aerial drill, some of which crossed the so-called median line dividing the strait and entered Taiwan’s so-called southwest air defense identification zone (ADIZ).
China, which regards Taiwan as its own territory, deployed 12 J-16 fighters, two J-10 fighters, two J-11 fighters, two H-6 bombers and one Y-8 anti-submarine aircraft for the maneuver, but none got close to mainland Taiwan itself or flew over it.
Beijing on Friday touched on its combat drills near the Taiwan Strait, censuring what it described as collusion between Taipei and Washington following a visit to the island territory by a senior U.S. diplomat that enraged China.
China’s widely-read Global Times daily described the Chinese aerial drills in a Saturday editorial as a practice run to take over Taiwan.
"The U.S. and Taiwan must not misjudge the situation, or believe the exercise is a bluff. Should they continue to make provocations, a war will inevitably break out,” it wrote.
On Saturday, U.S. State Department’s Undersecretary for Economic Affairs Keith Krach wrapped up his 3-day tour of Taiwan as the most senior American diplomat to visit the island territory in four decades.
He ended the visit by attending the funeral for former Taiwan president Lee Teng-hui, which also featured Tibetan separatist spiritual leader the Dalai Lama.
The visit triggered an immediate rebuke from Beijing, which opposes any recognition of Taiwan and has launched a decades-long policy of isolating the territory it considers as a renegade province.
Washington’s growing outreach to Taiwan under the Trump administration has become yet another flashpoint with Beijing as the two economic and military powers clash over a range of issues, including trade, security, as well as the coronavirus pandemic.
Beijing on Saturday launched a mechanism that would allow it to sanction foreign companies, raising the stakes in a raging tech war with the U.S. a day after Washington moved to rein in popular Chinese apps – ByteDance-owned TikTok and Tencent-owned WeChat.
The long-expected "unreliable entities list” is regarded as a weapon to retaliate against Washington, which has used its own "entity list” to shut Chinese telecom giant Huawei out of the U.S. market, while also moving against TikTok and WeChat.
Its implementation comes just a day after the U.S. Commerce Department intensified the pressure by ordering a ban on downloads of video app TikTok and effectively blocking the use of WeChat, the Chinese superapp.