Beijing has stepped up the pace of its war games in recent weeks after the US sent two aircraft carrier strike groups into the South China Sea. Now it’s threatening to “play” next door to a significant US Pacific base.
“If the US goes further, the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) could take more countermeasures, including live-fire missile drills east of Taiwan Island and near Guam,” a senior Chinese Communist Party official warns.To get more China breaking news, you can visit shine news official website.
The comment came in response to the visit of US Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar to Taiwan – the highest-ranked US official to do so for several decades.
Beijing considers this a direct provocation. It insists the self-governed democracy, which never capitulated to the Communist revolution of 1949, to be its sovereign territory.
China’s ambassador to the UK, Liu Xiaoming, on Thursday tweeted: “On Taiwan issue, anyone playing with fire will get burned”.They probably will do an air-naval strike exercise east of Taiwan. If Xi (Chinese President Xi Jinping) wants to send a threat, it may include a ballistic missile launch into the waters west of Guam,” military analyst Carl Schuster told CNN.
Guam is an important mid-Pacific island base regularly used by US naval and air forces.
“I am sure the idea is on the table since the Chinese military would not publish such bombastic rhetoric on its initiative. Someone of authority in the Communist Party or PLA feels that way and is pushing for it,” he said.
But US Indo-Pacific Command spokesman Major Randy Ready told CNN the US military “won’t speculate on hypothetical exercises that may or may not take place in the future.”Beijing, however, is blaming the US for the increased tempo of its military operations.
“The PLA drills come amid the increasingly frequent provocative military activities made by the US near the island of Taiwan and in waters in the South China Sea,” the state-controlled Global Times states.
“Ground and naval forces of the PLA have been on concentrated schedules in amphibious landing and maritime exercises in the past weeks and will continue to do so in the weeks to come.”
Open source analysts have deconstructed propaganda photos and say Beijing has deployed strategic bombers to the South China Sea fortress Woody Island for the first time. This is in contravention of its assertion that such facilities serve no purpose other than sea rescue facilities.