The Chinese Foreign Ministry announced Friday that Beijing has imposed unspecified sanctions on US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and members of her family.
“In ignoring China’s serious concerns and resolute opposition… Pelosi has insisted on visiting the Taiwan region of China. This constitutes a serious interference in China’s internal affairs,” the ministry statement said.
“This seriously undermines China’s sovereignty and territorial integrity, seriously violates the one-China principle, and seriously threatens peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait,” the statement added.
“In response to Pelosi’s blatant provocation, China decides to impose sanctions on Pelosi and her close family members, in line with relevant laws of the People’s Republic of China,” the statement continued.
Pelosi visited the self-ruled island earlier in the week, prompting Beijing to conduct air and sea live-fire military exercises in waters off Taiwan, which China considers an integral part of its territory.
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Nancy Pelosi says US ‘won’t allow’ China to isolate Taiwan
written by Alexandra Hartman Editor-in-Chief
Published on : 05/08/2022 – 07:32Modified : 05/08/2022 – 07:34
While Beijing, furious at Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan, is stepping up military exercises, the Speaker of the US House of Representatives assured Friday from Tokyo that the United States “will not allow” China to isolate the island of 23 million inhabitants.
United States “will not allow” to China to isolate Taiwan, Speaker of the US House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi said Friday, August 5 in Tokyo, following a visit to Taiwan that aroused the ire of Beijing.
Nancy Pelosi, 82, who was in Japan – the final leg of her Asian tour – for the first time since 2015, angered China by visiting Taiwan on Tuesday and Wednesday.
Beijing considers this autonomous territory of 23 million inhabitants as an integral part of its territory, and responded by launching Thursday unprecedented military exercises around the island, including firing ballistic missiles, some of which would have fallen in Japan’s exclusive economic zone.
“The Chinese carried out these shootings, probably using our visit as a pretext,” commented Nancy Pelosi during a press conference Friday in Tokyo.
They “tried to isolate Taiwan”, she added, recalling that Beijing had in the spring rejected a call from the United States to allow Taiwan’s participation in the annual meeting of the World Health Organization. (WHO). But “they will not isolate Taiwan by preventing us from going there. We had high-level visits, from senators in the spring, in a bipartisan way (…), and we will not allow them to isolate Taiwan” , she launched. “They don’t decide our movements.”
Celebrating Taiwan, “a great democracy”
This tour of the region “was not intended to change the status quo here in Asia, to change the status quo in Taiwan”, assured Nancy Pelosi.
Since 1979, Washington has recognized only one Chinese government, that of Beijing, while continuing to provide support to the Taiwanese authorities, in particular through major arms sales.
This visit, she said, “concerned the ‘Taiwan Relations Act'”, a law passed by the United States Congress in 1979 and which characterizes relations between the United States and Taiwan, but also “the United States- China, all the laws and agreements that established what our relationship is.”
“It’s regarding celebrating Taiwan for what it is, a great democracy with a thriving economy, with respect for all of its people.”
Regarding Sino-American relations, she said that if the United States “did not speak regarding human rights in China because of (our) commercial interests, we would then lose all moral authority to talk regarding human rights anywhere in the world”.
With Archyde.com and AFP
Asian stocks breathe a sigh of relief as geopolitical tensions ease
written by Alexandra Hartman Editor-in-Chief
Taiwan stocks led gains in Asia-Pacific markets as investors grapple with fears of Chinese military exercises and the impact of US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit.
Taiwan’s Taiex jumped 2.03%, with chip maker TSMC up 3%. The index traded lower this week as tensions escalated between the US and China over Pelosi’s trip.
The Nikkei 225 index in Japan rose 0.78% and the broadest MSCI index of Asia Pacific shares outside Japan added 0.76%.
The Australian index rose 0.43%, as the Reserve Bank of Australia revised its inflation forecast and warned that the economy will slow.
In South Korea, the Kospi advanced 0.87%.
Hong Kong’s Hang Seng was partially higher.
Mainland China markets were higher, too, with the Shanghai Composite up 0.28% and the Shenzhen Composite by 0.64%.
US stocks
Stock indices on Wall Street ended the trading session mixed, Thursday, as gains in shares of high-growth companies, strong, offset losses in energy companies, as investors awaited the monthly jobs data for indications of the pace of interest rate hikes.
The Nasdaq index reached a new high in three months, led by Amazon and Advanced Micro Devices, but declines in Apple and energy shares, including Exxon Mobil, pressured the S&P 500.
Concerns regarding a global economic slowdown pushed oil prices to their lowest levels since before the Ukraine crisis erupted in February, and US bond yields plummeted following the Bank of England warned of a prolonged recession.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 85.31 points, or 0.26 percent, to record 32,727.19 points, and the Standard & Poor’s 500 index fell by 3.15 points, or 0.08 percent, to record 4,152.02 points. As for the Nasdaq Composite, it rose 52.42 points, or 0.41 percent, to record 12,720.58 points at the close.
Under pressure from Chinese military exercises, Taiwan castigates its “malicious neighbor”
written by Alexandra Hartman Editor-in-Chief
Chinese ballistic missile fire around Taiwan, which began on Thursday, is “a serious problem that affects our national security”, worries Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida while Taiwan denounces the attitude of its “malicious neighbor”.
Taiwan lambasted his “malicious neighbor” on Friday August 5 on the second day of largest military exercises ever held around the island by China, oblivious to the outraged protests of the United States and its allies.
Beijing on Thursday fired ballistic missiles and deployed its air force and navy in six maritime zones around Taiwan, approaching up to 20 km from the coast and disrupting some of the world’s busiest trade routes, to express its anger. following the visit to Taipei by Speaker of the US House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi.
Communist China, which considers Taiwan to be part of its territory, saw the visit as a major provocation. Washington for its part accused the Chinese government of having overreacted.
The exercises, including a “conventional missile assault” in waters east of Taiwan according to the Chinese Ministry of Defense, are to continue until noon Sunday. On Friday, Taipei said that many “planes and warships” had crossed the “median line” of the Taipei Strait, which separates the island from the mainland, at the end of the morning.
According to the official New China news agency, the People’s Liberation Army “flew more than 100 warplanes, including fighters and bombers”, as well as “more than 10 destroyers and frigates” on Thursday.
State broadcaster CCTV claimed that Chinese missiles even flew over Taiwan for the first time.
The Taiwanese government told him that the Chinese army had launched 11 Donfeng-class ballistic missiles “in several bursts”. Japan counted nine, four of which “would have flown over the main island of Taiwan”.
The Taipei Defense Ministry, however, did not confirm the trajectory of the projectiles, “considering that the main purpose of the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) launching missiles is to intimidate us and for the purpose of protecting the capabilities intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance of the army,” according to a press release.
“We did not expect the malevolent neighbor to flaunt its might at our doorstep, and arbitrarily endanger the world’s busiest waterways with its military exercises,” Taiwan’s prime minister told reporters. Su Tseng-chang.
“Provocative military operations”
Washington accused Beijing of having “chosen to overreact” to Nancy Pelosi’s visit, and warned that its aircraft carrier USS Reagan would continue to “monitor” the surroundings of the island, while announcing that it had postponed an intercontinental missile test. to avoid aggravating the crisis.
China “used the visit of the Speaker of the House of Representatives as a pretext to increase its provocative military operations in and around the Taiwan Strait”, said White House spokesman for strategic affairs John Kirby .
“The temperature is quite high”, but the tensions “can drop very easily if the Chinese stop these very aggressive military exercises”, he estimated.
Japan expressed a formal diplomatic protest once morest Beijing, believing that five of the Chinese missiles fell inside its exclusive economic zone (EEZ).
>> To see: the Taiwanese are preparing for a possible conflict with China
These maneuvers are “a serious problem which affects our national security and that of our citizens”, declared Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida. “We call for the immediate cessation of military exercises.”
In Tokyo, the final leg of her eventful Asian tour, Ms Pelosi said the United States “will not allow” China to isolate Taiwan.
This tour of the region “was not intended to change the status quo here in Asia, to change the status quo in Taiwan,” she said.
Closure of transport routes
But Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said in Phnom Penh on the sidelines of a regional summit on Thursday that “blatant provocation” by the United States had set an “unfortunate precedent”.
“If it is not corrected and countered, will the principle of non-interference in internal affairs still exist? Will international law still be respected?” he said, according to New China.
The maneuvers encroach on some of the busiest shipping routes on the planet, through which essential electronic equipment from factories in East Asia is shipped to global markets.
Taiwan’s Maritime and Port Bureau has warned ships passing through this area and several international airlines have told AFP they will reroute their flights to avoid the airspace around the island.
“Closing these transport routes – even temporarily – has consequences not only for Taiwan, but also for trade flows linked to Japan and South Korea,” Nick Marro, senior global trade analyst, wrote in a note. of the Economist Intelligence Unit.
But Taipei markets appeared to ignore the tensions. Taiwan’s Taiex Shipping and Transportation Index, which tracks major shipping and air transport stocks, gained 2.3% on Friday morning.
Analysts agree that, despite its aggressive stance, Beijing does not currently want an armed confrontation with the United States and its allies over Taiwan.
“The last thing Xi wants is the outbreak of an accidental war,” Titus Chen, associate professor of political science at National Sun Yat-Sen University in Taiwan, told AFP.
With AFP