China today surprisingly launched "a special joint patrol and inspection operation in the central and northern part of the Taiwan Strait".
According to Guancha, a nationalist news portal in Shanghai, the operation will last 7 days, although the number of vessels involved other than the Haixun 06 is not specified, according to the brief announcement by the Maritime Safety Administration of Fujian, a province opposite in Taiwan.
It is not clear whether this is Beijing's first response to the meeting that the island's president Tsai Ing-wen will have in Los Angeles in a few hours with the speaker of the US House Kevin McCarthy.
In fact, Tsai has already arrived in the Californian city, her second transit to the United States after completing visits to Guatemala and Belize, two of the last 13 countries with which the island has diplomatic relations: the leader of Taipei is destined to be the first to see a speaker of the House, the third highest institutional office in the US, on American soil since the two sides broke off official relations over 40 years ago, having scheduled a meeting with Kevin McCarthy today, at 10 local time (19 in Italy ).
ANSA Agency
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The Taiwanese Progressive Democratic Party leader will see McCarthy with a bipartisan congressional group at the Reagan Library outside Los Angeles, according to Chang Tun-han, deputy secretary general of Taiwan's presidential office.
Meanwhile, other details of Tsai's first transit to the US, in New York, at the end of March have emerged: his office, local media reported, confirmed the high-level meetings held, including Hakeem Jeffries, the top Democratic representative at the House of Representatives, and Senators Joni Ernst and Mark Kelly.
Taiwan has hailed the "rare opportunity" constituted by the Tsai-McCarthy face-off, even if the move risks provoking renewed military tension between the island and China which has threatened "resolute action", considering Taipei an "inalienable" part of its territory to be reunified even by force, if necessary.