China sees US increasing military deployment in region amid Taiwan tensions

ISTANBUL

Doubling down on its policy of Taiwan’s reunification with mainland, China has, however, said the US may increase its military deployment in the region amid tensions in the Taiwan Strait.

“At present, the situation in the Taiwan Strait is still turbulent. We will be wary of the US taking advantage of the cross-Straits situation to increase military deployment and try to create a larger crisis,” said China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi, referring to US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s trip to Taiwan last week.

He accused Washington of “three major mistakes” including “grossly interfering in China’s internal affairs, condoning and supporting ‘Taiwan independence’ forces, and deliberately undermining peace across the Taiwan Strait.”

Pelosi undertook the trip on Aug. 2 and 3 – the first in 25 years by a sitting US House speaker – despite Beijing’s warnings that the island is a “breakaway province” and that her visit would be in violation of the country’s “one-China policy.”

Soon after she left Taipei, Beijing launched massive military exercises on Aug. 4 that ended this week on Wednesday.

Beijing also sanctioned Pelosi and her close family over the trip while downgrading military dialogue with the US and suspending cooperation in climate change besides six other “counter-measures.”

“Pelosi’s perversion is disgusting, not only a blatant and unreasonable provocation, but also a political farce that is doomed to fail,” the top Chinese diplomat said, according to a statement by the Foreign Ministry on Friday. His remarks came to media on Thursday night after hosting his counterparts from South Korea and Nepal.

Beijing on Wednesday reiterated its policy of using force to unify Taiwan, home to over 24 million people, with the mainland but said peaceful process will be its top priority to achieve the goal.

Boasting of international support for “one-China policy” which many nations reiterated in the wake of Pelosi’ trip to Taiwan, Wang said: “The measures taken by China are also safeguarding the basic norms of international relations and international fairness and justice.”

He added: “It is not China that is changing the status quo in the Taiwan Strait, but the United States, which is trying to ‘use Taiwan to control China’.”

Wang defended China’s “counter-measures,” saying they are “precisely to maintain peace in the Taiwan Strait and regional stability.”

He said “the principle of non-interference in internal affairs is the ‘golden rule’ for state-to-state relations and a magic weapon’ for developing countries.”