The Taiwan authorities reported this Saturday that there has been a significant increase in China’s military presence around the island after the deployment of 22 military aircrafta day after the US Secretary of State, Anthony Blinkenended a visit to Beijing.
He Ministry of Defence Taiwanese indicated that at 9:30 on Saturday it had detected 22 aircraft from the Chinese Army Air Force, of which 12 “crossed the median line of the Taiwan Strait” and entered the northern and central parts of the island’s security space to conduct joint combat patrols together with ships.
In a message published on his social network account X, he has also assured that “The Taiwanese Armed Forces have monitored the situation and employed appropriate forces to respond.”.
These events occur just one day after the secretary of the United States Department of State, Anthony Blinkenhas concluded his trip to China in order to stabilize bilateral relations.
The United States is Taiwan’s main international support and arms supplier, despite the absence of formal diplomatic ties, represented, for example, in the approval this week of an aid package to the territory worth about 7.5 billion euros.
Meanwhile, the United States and Taiwan will hold another round of trade negotiations next week in Taipei, the Office of the Trade Representative (USTR) reported in a statement this Friday.
The US delegation will be led by USTR assistant director for China, Mongolia and Taiwan, Terry McCartinand his team will include representatives from other US agencies for talks that begin April 29.
These negotiations occur within the framework of the so-called ‘US-Taiwan Trade Initiative on Trade in the 21st Century‘, launched in 2022 and, under which, Taiwan and the United States signed the first part of a partial trade agreement last year.
Although this trade agreement is far from being a free trade agreement, it has been described by Taipei as the broadest trade pact between both parties since Washington established diplomatic ties with Beijing in 1979 under the principle of recognizing “one China.”
That partial agreement is limited, covering issues such as customs forms, regulatory practices and anti-corruption measures, but it does not address tariffs on certain goods or Taiwanese complaints about double taxation in the United States.
The Chinese regime already expressed its opposition to the signing of this partial trade agreement last yeararguing that it violates the “one China” principle, which means that the only Chinese government that Washington recognizes is the one based in Beijing, which distances it from Taiwan’s independence aspirations.
Taiwan, where the Chinese nationalist army withdrew after defeat at the hands of communist troops in the civil war (1927-1949), has been governed autonomously since the end of the war, although China claims sovereignty over the island. which he considers a rebellious province for whose “reunification” he has not ruled out the use of force.
For its part, Washington is committed to the defense of the island under the Taiwan Relations Act that it signed in 1979 and that has made the North American power the largest supplier of weapons to Taiwan, although it is not clear whether the power would intervene in the event of a Chinese attack in a policy known as “ambiguity.” “strategic”.
According to the United States Department of Commerce, in the first two months of this year, US imports of goods from Taiwan reached a value of 14,945 million dollars, and exports of goods to the Asian country had a value of 6,156 million dollars. .
The meeting in Taipei will take place after Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s visit to China this week and after US President Joe Biden signed into law legislation valued at $95 billion that includes aid for Taiwan and a clause that could lead to TikTok being banned in the United States.
(With information from Europa Press and EFE)
