China's recent decision to fire missiles over Taiwan is a "gorilla in the room" that has to be contested, a top US military commander said Tuesday.

Beijing has carried out huge air and sea drills this month around Taiwan in a furious reaction to visits by US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and a congressional delegation.

Those exercises included firing multiple ballistic missiles into waters off Taiwan -- some of the world's busiest shipping routes -- and it was the first time China has taken such a step since the mid-1990s.

"It's very important that we contest this type of thing. I know that the gorilla in the room is launching missiles over Taiwan," Seventh Fleet Commander Vice Admiral Karl Thomas told reporters in Singapore.

"If we just allow that to happen, and we don't contest that, that'll be the next norm," he added.

"It's irresponsible to launch missiles over Taiwan into international waters, where the shipping lanes, where free shipping operates."

The Seventh Fleet is based in Japan and is a core part of Washington's navy presence in the Pacific.

During this month's drills Chinese state media reported that some of the ballistic missiles fired by the People's Liberation Army followed a trajectory directly over Taiwan's capital Taipei, a new escalation that Beijing stopped short of confirming.

Thomas compared the threats against Taiwan to the South China Sea where Beijing has spent years constructing military bases and facilities on a series of contested atolls, while denying it was doing just that.

"If you don't challenge it... all of a sudden it can become just like the islands in the South China Sea (that) have now become military outposts," he said.

"They now are full functioning military outposts that have missiles on them, large runways, hangers, radars, listening posts."

China's Communist Party has never run Taiwan but it regards the island as its territory and has vowed to one day seize it, by force if necessary.

Sabre rattling towards Taiwan has become more pronounced under Chinese President Xi Jinping.

- New sanctions -

The United States and Western allies have increased "freedom of navigation" crossings by naval vessels of both the Taiwan Strait and South China Sea to reinforce the concept that those seas are international waterways, sparking anger from Beijing.

China said it conducted new military drills on Monday as a delegation of US lawmakers visited Taipei.

State media ran footage and pictures of Taiwan's Penghu islands purportedly taken from Chinese jets flying a short distance from the archipelago.

But Taiwan denied that Chinese jets came close to Penghu.

"The CCP used cognitive warfare and other tricks to exaggerate and show that (its jet) was close to Penghu. This is not true," senior air force official Tung Pei-Lun told reporters on Tuesday.

The Penghu islands sit in between the Chinese mainland and Taiwan.

They host a major Taiwanese airbase and would be on the front line of any invasion attempt by Beijing.

With China pressing on with its drills, Taiwan's army said it would stage an armed F-16 exercise on Wednesday evening in the coastal city of Hualien, in a rare display of its advanced military capabilities.

In another move to rachet up economic pressure on Taiwan, Beijing on Tuesday sanctioned seven senior Taiwanese officials for being "diehard 'independence' separatists", the official Xinhua news agency said.

The sanctions, mostly against figures from President Tsai Ing-wen's ruling Democratic Progressive Party, were imposed because their activities "became all the more egregious" during Pelosi's visit, Xinhua said.

The sanctioned people are banned from entering China including Hong Kong and Macau, and are blocked from conducting any business with mainland entities.

Taipei said China was "trying to cause a chilling effect" through the sanctions, which included the island's de-facto envoy to the United States Hsiao Bi-khim.

An opinion poll published Tuesday showed that most of the Taiwanese public remain uncowed by the drills.

According to the Taiwanese Public Opinion Foundation, 45 percent of respondents said they are not afraid at all and 33 percent said they are not very afraid of the drills. Five percent said they were very afraid.

China conducts fresh drills around Taiwan as US lawmakers visit
Beijing (AFP) Aug 15, 2022 - China staged fresh military drills around Taiwan on Monday, slamming a new visit by United States lawmakers to the island days after a similar trip by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi triggered a furious response from Beijing.

The unannounced two-day trip by senior members of Congress prompted China to renew its rhetoric that it would "prepare for war" over Taiwan, a self-ruled democracy that Beijing's leaders claim and have vowed to one day seize.

The five-member congressional delegation -- led by Senator Ed Markey of Massachusetts -- met with President Tsai Ing-wen on Monday, according to Washington's de facto embassy in Taipei.

"The delegation had an opportunity to exchange views with Taiwan counterparts on a wide range of issues of importance to both the United States and Taiwan," it said.

Tsai told the lawmakers she wants "to maintain a stable status quo across the Taiwan Strait" and "jointly maintain the prosperity and stability of the Indo-Pacific region", her office said in a statement.

She said Russia's invasion of Ukraine demonstrated "the threat that authoritarian states pose to the world order", according to her office, and also thanked Washington for its support in the face of Chinese military threats.

The bipartisan trip sparked another bellicose response from Beijing, which said it had carried out a fresh round of "combat readiness patrol and combat drills in the sea and airspace around Taiwan island" on Monday.

"The Chinese People's Liberation Army continues to train and prepare for war, resolutely defend national sovereignty and territorial integrity, and resolutely crush any form of 'Taiwan independence' separatism and foreign interference attempts," Wu Qian, a spokesman for China's defense ministry, said.

"We warn the US and the DPP authorities: 'Using Taiwan to contain China' is doomed to failure," he added, referring to Taiwan's ruling Democratic Progressive Party.

In a defiant response, Taiwan's defence ministry vowed to face the latest drills "calmly and seriously and defend national security".

"Apart from expressing condemnation (of China's drills), the Ministry of National Defence will comprehensively grasp the movements in the sea and airspace around the Taiwan Strait," the ministry said.

It added that its forces had detected 30 Chinese planes and five ships operating around the strait on Monday. Of those, 15 planes crossed the median line -- an unofficial demarcation that Beijing does not recognise.

Monday's drills followed days of huge exercises around Taiwan in the wake of Pelosi's visit, which saw Beijing send warships, missiles and jets into the waters and skies near the island.

Taipei condemned those drills and missile tests as preparation for an invasion.

China's Communist Party has never ruled Taiwan but says it will use force if necessary to take the island and bristles at any perceived treatment of it as a sovereign nation state.

- 'Evil neighbour' -

That decades-old threat was reiterated in a white paper published last week, when China's Taiwan Affairs Office said it would "not renounce the use of force" against its neighbour and reserved "the option of taking all necessary measures".

Taipei has remained defiant throughout the standoff with Beijing, with Premier Su Tseng-chang saying the island welcomed "all countries and friends across the world" who want to support it.

"We shouldn't be too afraid to do anything, afraid to let visitors come and afraid to let our friends come, just because we have an evil neighbour next door," he said.

Foreign minister Joseph Wu struck a similar tone after meeting the US delegation on Monday.

"Authoritarian China can't dictate how democratic Taiwan makes friends, wins support, stays resilient and shines like a beacon of freedom," Wu said in a tweet.

Pelosi has stood by her visit which, combined with Beijing's response, sent tensions in the Taiwan Strait soaring to their highest in decades.

President Joe Biden said the US military was opposed to the trip by his fellow Democrat, who is second in line to the presidency after the vice president.

Congress is constitutionally an equal branch of government in the United States, with lawmakers free to travel where they wish, and Taiwan enjoys bipartisan backing in divided Washington.

The United States switched diplomatic relations from Taipei to Beijing in 1979. But it remains a key ally of Taiwan and maintains de facto diplomatic relations with Taipei.

Washington's official policy opposes both Taiwan declaring independence and China forcibly changing the island's status.

It remains deliberately ambiguous about whether it would come to Taiwan's aid militarily if China invaded.

Visits by senior US officials to Taiwan have happened for decades and even Pelosi's trip was not without precedent -- then-speaker of the House of Representatives Newt Gingrich visited in 1997.

But the frequency and profile of US visits has increased both under former president Donald Trump and Biden.

Taiwan has also seen a flurry of delegations visit from Europe and other Western allies in recent years, partly in response to Beijing's more aggressive stance under Chinese President Xi Jinping.

Related Links
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