BEIJING (AP) – China said Friday it will cancel or suspend dialogue with the United States on a range of issues from climate change to military relations to anti-drug efforts in retaliation for this week’s visit to Taiwan from the Speaker of the United States House, Nancy Pelosi. .
The measures, which come amid cratering relations between Beijing and Washington, are the latest in a series of promised measures aimed at punishing the United States for allowing visits to the island it claims as its own territory. ‘annexation by force if necessary. China launched threatening military drills in six areas near Taiwan’s coast on Thursday that it says will last until Sunday.
Missiles have also been fired over Taiwan, defense officials told state media. China routinely opposes the self-governing island having its own contacts with foreign governments, but its response to Pelosi’s visit has been unusually pointed.
The Foreign Ministry said dialogue between US and Chinese regional commanders and defense department heads would be cancelled, along with talks on military maritime security.
Cooperation on the return of illegal immigrants, criminal investigations, transnational crime, illegal drugs and climate change will be suspended, the ministry said.
The actions were taken because Pelosi visited Taiwan “in disregard of China’s strong opposition and serious representations,” the ministry said in a statement.
China has accused the Biden administration of an attack on Chinese sovereignty, even though Pelosi is head of the legislative branch of government and Biden had no authority to block her visit.
China’s actions come ahead of a key congress of the ruling Communist Party later this year in which President Xi Jinping is expected to win a third five-year term as party leader. With the economy stumbling, the party has fueled nationalism and launched near-daily attacks on the government of Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen, who refuses to recognize Taiwan as part of China, in a bid to shore up support among the citizenship
China said on Friday that more than 100 warplanes and 10 warships have taken part in live-fire military drills surrounding Taiwan over the past two days, as it announced mostly symbolic sanctions against the Speaker of the House of States United, Nancy Pelosi, and her family for her visit to Taiwan earlier this year. week
The official Xinhua news agency said on Friday that fighters, bombers, destroyers and frigates were being used in what it called “joint blockade operations”.
The military’s Eastern Theater Command also fired new versions of the missiles, which it said hit unidentified targets in the Taiwan Strait “accurately.”
The Rocket Force also fired projectiles over Taiwan into the Pacific, military officials told state media, in a major escalation of China’s threats to attack and invade the island.
The drills, which Xinhua described as being conducted on an “unprecedented scale,” are China’s most strident response to Pelosi’s visit. The speaker is the highest-ranking US politician to visit Taiwan in 25 years.
Dialogue and exchanges between China and the US, especially on military matters and economic exchanges, have stalled at best. Climate change and the fight against the trade in illegal drugs like fentanyl were, however, areas where they had found common cause, and Beijing’s suspension of cooperation could have important implications for efforts to make progress on these issues .
China and the United States are the world’s number one and two largest climate polluters, together producing nearly 40% of all fossil fuel emissions. Its top climate diplomats, John Kerry and Xie Zhenhua, maintained a cordial relationship dating back to the Paris climate accord, which was made possible by a breakthrough negotiated between the two and others.
China, pushed by Kerry, pledged at last year’s UN global climate summit in Glasgow to work with the United States “as a matter of urgency” to reduce climate-destroying emissions, but Kerry was unable to persuade him to significantly accelerate China’s move away from coal.
On the Chinese coast opposite Taiwan, tourists gathered on Friday to try to catch a glimpse of any military aircraft headed for the exercise area.
Fighter jets could be heard flying overhead and tourists taking pictures chanted, “Let’s take Taiwan back,” looking out over the blue waters of the Taiwan Strait from Pingtan Island, a popular scenic spot in Fujian province.
Pelosi’s visit stirred emotions among the Chinese public, and the government’s response “makes us feel that our motherland is very powerful and gives us confidence that the return of Taiwan is the irresistible trend,” said Wang Lu, a tourist from the neighboring province of Zhejiang.
China is a “powerful country and will not allow anyone to encroach on its own territory,” said Liu Bolin, a high school student visiting the island.
His mother, Zheng Zhidan, was a little more circumspect.
“We are compatriots and we hope to live in peace,” Zheng said. “We must live in peace with each other.”
China’s insistence that Taiwan is its territory and its threat to use force to bring it under its control have been prominent in the Communist Party’s propaganda, education system, and fully controlled media. the state for more than seven decades since the sides split amid civilians. war in 1949.
Taiwan residents overwhelmingly favor maintaining the status quo of de facto independence and reject China’s demands for the island to join the communist-controlled mainland.
On Friday morning, China sent warships and warplanes across the median line of the Taiwan Strait, Taiwan’s Defense Ministry said, crossing what had for decades been an unofficial buffer zone between China and Taiwan.
Five of the missiles fired by China since military exercises began on Thursday landed in Japan’s Exclusive Economic Zone off Hateruma, an island far south of Japan’s main islands, Japanese Defense Minister Nobuo Kishi said . He said Japan protested the missile landings in China as “serious threats to Japan’s national security and the safety of the Japanese people.”
Japan’s Defense Ministry later said it believed four other missiles fired from China’s southeastern Fujian coast flew over Taiwan.
Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida said Friday that China’s military exercises targeting Taiwan pose a “serious problem” that threatens regional peace and security.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said China’s actions were in line with “international law and international practice,” although she did not provide any evidence.
“Regarding the Exclusive Economic Zone, China and Japan have not carried out maritime delimitation in the relevant waters, so there is no such thing as Japan’s EEZ,” Hua told reporters at a daily briefing.
In Tokyo, where Pelosi is wrapping up her Asia trip, she said China cannot prevent US officials from visiting Taiwan. Kishida, speaking after breakfast with Pelosi and her congressional delegation, said the missile launches must “stop immediately.”
China said it summoned European diplomats to the country to protest statements issued by the Group of Seven industrialized nations and the European Union criticizing Chinese military exercises around Taiwan.
His foreign ministry said Friday that Vice Minister Deng Li made “solemn representations” about what it called “willful interference in China’s internal affairs.”
Deng said China will “prevent the country from being divided with the utmost determination, using all means and at any cost.”
The ministry said the meeting was held Thursday night, but did not provide information on which countries participated. Earlier on Thursday, China canceled a meeting of foreign ministers with Japan to protest the G-7’s statement that there was no justification for the drills.
Both ministers were attending a meeting of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations in Cambodia.
China has touted the foreign support it has received for its response to Pelosi’s visit, mainly from authoritarian states such as Russia, Syria and North Korea.
China had previously summoned US Ambassador Nicholas Burns to protest Pelosi’s visit. The speaker left Taiwan on Wednesday after meeting with Tsai and holding other public events. He traveled to South Korea and then Japan. Both countries host US military bases and could be drawn into conflict with Taiwan.
The Chinese exercises include troops from the navy, air force, rocket force, strategic support force and logistics support force, according to Xinhua.
They are believed to be the largest near Taiwan in geographical terms and the closest, 20 kilometers (12 mi) from the island.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Friday called the drills a “significant escalation” and said he has urged Beijing to back off.
US law requires the government to treat threats to Taiwan, including blockades, as matters of “grave concern”.
The drills echo the last major Chinese military exercises aimed at intimidating Taiwan’s leaders and voters in 1995 and 1996.
Taiwan has put its military on alert and held civil defense drills, but the overall mood remained calm on Friday. Flights have been canceled or diverted and fishermen have stayed in port to avoid Chinese drills.
In the northern port of Keelung, Lu Chuan-hsiong, 63, was enjoying his morning swim on Thursday, saying he was not worried.
“Everyone should want money, not bullets,” Lu said.
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Associated Press writer Ellen Knickmeyer in Washington, DC, contributed to this report.