BEIJING (Reuters) -China will hold three days of military exercises around Taiwan from Saturday, the People’s Liberation Army’s Eastern Theatre Command announced, the day after Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen returned from a trip to the United States.
China will hold “combat readiness patrols” and exercises around in the Taiwan Strait and to the north, south and east of Taiwan “as planned”, it added in a brief statement without offering other details.
Tsai met U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Kevin McCarthy while in Los Angeles on Wednesday, angering Beijing, which views Taiwan as its own territory.
There was no immediate response from Taiwan’s government, though the island’s defence ministry said on Saturday morning that in the previous 24 hours it had spotted four Chinese aircraft in Taiwan’s air defence zone, not an unusual number.
Tsai will meet visiting U.S. lawmaker delegation, led by Michael McCaul, chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, later on Saturday.
China had threatened unspecified retaliation if the meeting were to take place. Beijing staged war games around Taiwan, including live fire missile launches, in August after then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi visited Taipei.
Taiwanese officials had expected a less severe reaction to the McCarthy meeting, given it took place in the United States, but they had said they could not rule out the possibility of China staging more drills.
(Reporting by Beijing newsroom; Writing and additionl reporting by Ben Blanchard in Taipei; Editing by Diane Craft and William Mallard)
