We are pausing our live coverage of the Taiwan crisis. Here is our full report on the latest developments:
Summary
Hello to our live blog readers watching news developments involving China and Taiwan, following military exercises conducted by Beijing around the island democracy in the days since the visit to Taipei by US House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi early last week.
It’s 6am local time in Taipei on Monday morning. Here’s where things stand:
- Taiwan’s top diplomat in the US, de facto ambassador Bi-khim Hsiao, compared China to a bully but asserted that her island democracy intended “to resolve our political differences through dialogue.”
- Joe Biden has been pretty quiet about Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan last week but, behind the scenes, the US president’s team has intervened to delay progress on some hawkish legislation introduced in the US Senate that undermines America’s “strategic ambiguity” on the one-China policy.
- The defence ministry of Taiwan said it had detected 66 Chinese air force planes and 14 Chinese warships conducting activities in and around the Taiwan Strait on Sunday.
- China again conducted military drills and exercises around Taiwan on Sunday. The four-day show of military strength had been a response to US politician Nancy Pelosi’s visit to the disputed territory earlier in the week.
- Taiwan’s defence ministry earlier said it has sent aircraft and ships to “appropriately” react to Chinese military drills around the island.
- China’s navigational warnings and NOTAMs for military exercises around Taiwan have expired, excluding in one area, and China didn’t extend those exercises as some had previously thought they might.
- Taiwan’s transport ministry said flights through its airspace had gradually resumed on Sunday about noon as most notifications for Chinese military drills near the island were “no longer in effect”.
- Taiwan’s official Central News Agency has reported that Taiwan’s army will conduct live-fire artillery drills in southern Pingtung County on Tuesday and Thursday, in response to the Chinese exercises.
- The Chinese military will from now on conduct “regular” drills on the eastern side of the median line of the Taiwan Strait, Chinese state television reported on Sunday, citing a commentator.
- Taiwan’s mainland affairs council (MAC) – which sets policy towards the People’s Republic of China (PRC) – has called on Beijing authorities to “exercise restraint and immediately stop all of its belligerent behaviours”. The council accused the PRC of continuing with its military exercises around Taiwan “as part of a simulation for an attack and a blockade in order to intimidate Taiwan and neighbouring countries”.
- Taiwan’s Premier Su Tseng-chang said China has “arrogantly” used military actions to disrupt regional peace and stability. Speaking to reporters in Taipei on Sunday, Su also called on Beijing to not flex its military muscles, and condemned “foreign enemies” he said were attempting to sap the morale of the Taiwanese people through cyberattacks and disinformation campaigns.
- A White House spokesperson has said China is trying to “change the status quo” through its military drills around Taiwan.
- Taiwan’s top diplomat in the US has said the self-governing island has been “bullied, marginalised and isolated from the world” for too long and maintained its people would not surrender their freedom.
- Beijing has announced it will hold further military exercises near the southern part of the Yellow Sea and Bohai, near South Korea. The exercises are expected to start on Monday 8 August and last until 8 September.
- US secretary of state Antony Blinken has reassured the Philippines that the US would come to its defence if attacked in the South China Sea.
