Monitoring Desk
TAIPEI: Three US Air Force planes, including two B-52 bombers, flew near Taiwan on Wednesday, the island’s defense ministry said, after Taiwan’s air force scrambled earlier in the week to intercept Chinese jets. The United States is Taiwan’s most important international backer, even in the absence of formal diplomatic ties, and is also the island’s main source of arms.
Tensions spiked between Taiwan and China, which claims the island as its own, on Sunday and Monday, as Taiwan sent F-16s to shadow approaching Chinese bombers and fighters. China has been flying what it calls “island encirclement” drills on-off since 2016 when Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen first took office. Beijing believes Tsai, who won re-election last month, wishes to push the island’s formal independence. Tsai says Taiwan is an independent country called the Republic of China, its official name.
Taiwan’s Defence Ministry said one US MC-130, a special mission aircraft based on the C-130 Hercules transport, flew down the Taiwan Strait in a southerly direction. The two B-52 bombers skirted Taiwan’s east coast, also in a southerly direction, the ministry added. Taiwan’s armed forces monitored both sets of flights, and nothing out of the ordinary was observed, it said, without giving more details. The US Air Force has a major base on the southern Japanese island of Okinawa, which lies close to Taiwan. China has described its exercises on Sunday and Monday as actions to guard national sovereignty.
Taiwan has urged China to focus its efforts on fighting the new coronavirus rather than menacing the island. Taiwan Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Joanne Ou said in a statement earlier on Wednesday that China’s military activities had only caused anger on the island and harmed the peaceful development of relations across the strait. “Our government will continue to adopt a pragmatic and restrained stance, prudently handle cross-strait relations, and deepen cooperation with countries with similar ideals, including the United States, in response to the rising Chinese military threat,” she added.
Meanwhile, Taiwan’s presence at a World Health Organization (WHO) meeting this week on the new coronavirus was the result of direct talks between the island and the body, and did not require China’s permission, Taiwan’s Foreign Ministry said on Wednesday. The island’s lack of WHO membership, due to the objections of China, which considers it a wayward Chinese province and not a separate state, has been an increasingly sore point for Taiwan amid the virus outbreak.
Taiwan has complained it has been unable to get timely information from the WHO and has accused China of passing incorrect information to the organization about Taiwan’s total virus case numbers, which stand at 18. China has more than 44,000. But in a small diplomatic breakthrough for the island, its health experts were this week allowed to attend an online technical meeting on the virus.
China’s Foreign Ministry said that was because China gave approval for Taiwan’s participation. Taiwan Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Joanne Ou said China was trying to take credit for something it didn’t deserve. “The participation of our experts at this WHO forum was an arrangement made by our government and the WHO directly. It did not need China’s approval,” Ou added. Taiwan’s experts took part in a personal capacity to avoid political disputes, and did not give their nationality when joining the online forum, she said.
The WHO, responding to questions from Reuters, said the aim of the meeting was to gather leading global scientists “to set research priorities and accelerate the generation of critical scientific information and the most needed medical tools” to contribute to the emergency response to the virus. Taiwan’s WHO exclusion became another point of contention between China and the United States last week, after the US ambassador to the UN in Geneva told the WHO’s Executive Board that the agency should deal directly with Taiwan’s government. China, which says Beijing adequately represents Taiwan at the WHO, accused the United States of a political “hype-up” about the issue.
China and the WHO say they have ensured Taiwan is kept up to date with virus developments and that communication with the island is smooth. Taiwan’s democratically elected government says that it alone has the right to represent the island’s 23 million people, that it has never been a part of the People’s Republic of China, and that it has no need to be represented by them. (Reuters)
