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US Navy reconnaissance flight over Taiwan Strait angers China

2023-02-28T13:10:18.608Z


The maneuver over the Taiwan Strait was meant to assert the right to operate in international airspace despite strong objections from the Chinese military. Beijing accused Washington of increasing tensions in the area. 


Tension between Taiwan and China complicates US companies 0:55

(CNN) --

A US Navy reconnaissance plane flew over the Taiwan Strait on Monday, in a move aimed at asserting the right to operate in international airspace despite strong objections from the Chinese military. .

In a statement released Monday, the US 7th Fleet said the flight of the P-8A Poseidon over the waterway separating China from the autonomous island of Taiwan was conducted in accordance with international law, demonstrating "America's commitment to a free and open Indo-Pacific."

But a spokesman for China's People's Liberation Army (PLA) Eastern Theater Command, Army Major Col. Shi Yi, accused Washington of promoting the flight and raising tensions.

  • Taiwan says 47 Chinese planes crossed Taiwan Strait amid new Chinese military exercises

The US flight "deliberately disrupted the regional situation and jeopardized peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait," Shi said in a report on the PLA's English-language website.

That accusation was amplified in Chinese state media, with a story in the nationalist state tabloid Global Times claiming the US Navy anti-submarine warfare and surveillance plane flight was “another provocation meant to stir up trouble.”

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The US 7th Fleet statement stated that the country would continue to "fly, navigate and operate anywhere international law allows, including within the Taiwan Strait."

The Chinese Communist Party claims Taiwan, a democratically governed island of 24 million, as part of its sovereign territory even though it has never controlled it.

Beijing sends military planes and ships into the Taiwan Strait daily as it maintains military pressure on the island.

On Tuesday, Taiwan's Defense Ministry said it saw 14 PLA planes and three naval vessels around the island, including four planes crossing the median line of the strait, which for decades served as an informal demarcation line rarely crossed. violates between the two sides, but is now routinely ignored by Beijing.

The PLA deployments on Tuesday increased from the four planes and three ships detected by Taiwan on Monday, but none of them crossed the median line.

The US P-8A flight on Monday was the second in less than a week to come to the attention of the PLA.

On Friday, a US Poseidon with a CNN crew on board was intercepted by a PLA fighter jet over the South China Sea near the Paracel Islands, a chain of disputed coral atolls where Beijing has built military installations despite the claims of Vietnam and Taiwan.

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The intercept, filmed by the CNN team, came after a PLA airfield in Paracels, which China calls the Xisha Islands, warned the US plane to stay out of what it claimed was Chinese airspace around the islands. .

A Global Times report on Sunday said the PLA handled the encounter with the US plane professionally.

But the presence of the "US spy plane that conducted close reconnaissance of China at the gates" of the country shows that Washington, and not Beijing, is the "aggressor" in the region, according to the report.

“The US military frequently sends planes and ships into the South China Sea, the East China Sea, and the Taiwan Strait for close reconnaissance operations and provocative transits, even though China is thousands of miles from the US .", said.

US general: PLA is 'preparing for something'

In a related development Monday, the general in charge of the US Army in the Pacific said the PLA is on a "historic trajectory" as it continues to build up its forces.

“The military arm that they have created is extraordinary,” General Charles Flynn said at an American Enterprise Institute event.

“They're rehearsing, practicing, experimenting, and they're preparing those forces for something,” Flynn said.

“But you don't build that kind of arsenal just to defend and protect.

You are probably building it for another purpose.”

At the same event, Army Secretary Christine Wormuth said that while she does not believe a PLA amphibious invasion of Taiwan is imminent, "obviously we have to prepare ... to fight and win that war."

"I think the best way to avoid fighting that war is to show (the PRC) and the countries in the region that we can really win it," he said.

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Source: cnnespanol

All news articles on 2023-02-28

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