China’s military said on Thursday it conducted exercises near Taiwan “to safeguard national sovereignty” in the face of rising US diplomatic exchanges with Taipei, underlining mounting tensions in the region.
The comments came a day after Alex Azar, US health secretary, became the most senior Washington cabinet official to visit Taiwan since 1979 and marked a rare example of Beijing giving a political reason for a military exercise.
“Recently, certain large countries are incessantly making negative moves regarding the Taiwan issue and sending wrong signals to the ‘Taiwan independence’ forces, seriously threatening peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait,” Colonel Zhang Chunhui, spokesman of the People’s Liberation Army’s Eastern Theatre Command, said in a statement.