The Chinese military escorted the US Navy destroyer USS Milius as it passed through the Taiwan Strait, said Shi Yi, spokesman for the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) Combat Command’s Eastern Zone Combat Command.
“The Eastern Zone of the PLA Combat Command organized detachments to escort and monitor the destroyer along the entire route,” he said.
The Chinese military, Shi Yi said, maintains a high degree of combat readiness to resolutely defend national sovereignty and security, as well as regional stability.
The situation around Taiwan escalated significantly after Nancy Pelosi, then Speaker of the US House of Representatives, visited the island in early August last year. China, which considers the island one of its provinces, criticized her trip, seeing her move as Washington’s support for Taiwanese separatism.
Official relations between the PRC and Taiwan deteriorated in 1949 after the Kuomintang forces led by Chiang Kai-shek, defeated in a civil war with the Communist Party of China, moved to Taiwan.
Business and informal contact between the island and the mainland resumed in the late 1980s. Since the early 1990s, the parties began to contact through non-governmental organizations – the Beijing Association for the Development of Relations across the Taiwan Strait and the Taipei Cross-Strait Exchange Foundation.
File Image: Flags of China & Taiwan
Meanwhile, the United States and South Korea started large-scale combined air drills on Monday, involving over 100 aircraft, the South Korean Yonhap news agency reports citing the South Korean Air Force.
The Korea Flying Training (KFT) will be conducted at Gwangju Air Base in Gwangju for over one week, with about 110 aircraft (over 60 South Korean warplanes and some 40 US aircraft) and over 1,400 troops mobilized, Yonhap said.
Yonhap also reported on Monday, citing the South Korean Navy, that the United States, South Korea, and Japan were holding missile defense drills in international waters in the Sea of Japan.
South Korean and US air forces reportedly conducted joint drills involving a nuclear-capable B-52H strategic bomber following North Korea’s intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) launch.
The missile was launched toward the Sea of Japan, flying about 1,000 kilometers (621 miles) and landing outside Japan’s exclusive economic zone on Thursday. The launch prompted the Japanese authorities to issue an evacuation order for the residents of Japan’s northernmost island of Hokkaido, which reportedly led to the temporary suspension of high-speed trains and road transport in the north of the country.
Thursday’s launch came amid a halt in cross-border communication between the two Koreas, a period of silence that began on April 7. This latest firing was the ninth launch of a North Korean missile this year. In 2022, Pyongyang launched 37 ballistic missiles.
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