The Chinese army began its second day of war maneuvers around Taiwan this Friday, with exercises to test its ability to “seize power” and control key areas, exercises that, it has said, have set out to punish the new Taiwanese president, Lai Ching-te for his “separatist acts,” while the UN has urged both parties to avoid an escalation of the conflict.
The spokesman for the Secretary General of the United Nations, Stéphane Dujarric, said that “regarding China, I can tell you that we are closely following the development of events in the Taiwan Strait. We urge the parties involved to refrain from actions that may aggravate tensions in the region. (…) On the question of China, we are guided by the 1971 General Assembly resolution.”
The norm to which Dujarric refers is resolution 2758 of the XXVI General Assembly, of 1971, by which the Republic of China, with its capital in Taiwan, was replaced by the People’s Republic of China, with its capital in Beijing, as China’s only legitimate representative in the body.
The two days of exercises in the Taiwan Strait and around groups of islands controlled by Taiwan near the Chinese coast They began just three days after Lai’s inauguration.
China, which considers Taiwan its own territory and denounces Lai as a “separatist,” censored his inauguration speech on Monday, in which he urged Beijing to end its threats and affirmed that both sides of the strait “They are not subordinate to each other.”
The Eastern Theater Command of the People’s Liberation Army said in a brief statement that its forces continued this Friday with their exercises, called “Joint Sword”.
The objective of the exercises is “to test the ability to jointly seize power, launch joint attacks and occupy key areas.”
Meanwhile, Lai has repeatedly offered to hold talks with China, but has been rejected. He states that only the people of Taiwan can decide their future and rejects Beijing’s sovereignty claims.
The Chinese authorities have reiterated on numerous occasions that Taiwan’s independence will not be tolerated and that They will not rule out the use of force to prevent secession.
Ties between China and the island of Taiwan, which it considers another province under its sovereignty, were severed in 1949, after the forces of the nationalist Kuomintang party suffered defeat in the civil war against the Communist Party and moved to the archipelago. Relations were reestablished only at the business level and informal in the late 1980s.
