Tsai Lambasts PLA for Challenging Cross-Strait Stability with Military Drills near Taiwan

 Tsai Lambasts PLA for Challenging Cross-Strait Stability with Military Drills near Taiwan

Source: UDN

April 16, 2019

At noon yesterday, the PLA conducted cross-service and multi-military-region joint military drills in the waters and airspace near Taiwan, with a number of PLA military aircraft, including bombers and jet fighters, flying around Taiwan, and naval vessels operating in waters off east Taiwan. The ROC military immediately responded by sending F-16 fighters to monitor the Mainland’s maneuvers.

In a reception titled “TRA & AIT@40: Celebrating 40 Years of Friendship” organized by the American Institute in Taiwan (AIT), Taipei Office, last evening, President Tsai Ing-wen condemned China, in her remarks, for challenging the regional and cross-Strait stability by increasing the frequency of its military drills in the region recently.

The Taipei-based Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) urged Beijing to stop malicious provocations immediately, telling it not to underestimate the ROC government’s self-defense capabilities for safeguarding its sovereignty.

According to a news story carried by China Military Online, Zhang Chunhui (張春暉), press spokesperson for the PLA Eastern Theater Command, stated that the PLA’s military drills this time were a normal arrangement within its annual training program, adding that such actions were entirely justified and the legitimate right of a sovereign state and were conducive to maintaining peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait.

A scholar pointed out that the gradual transformation of the PLA air force from a pure role of homeland defense to an “expeditionary air force” revealed that the PLA made efforts to strengthen multi-military-region training in response to the needs in case of a war across the Strait.

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