China using Pelosi as pretext to encircle Taiwan, test its navy’s capability

China’s Navy is using US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi as the pretext to literally encircle Taiwan and test the navy’s capability to lay a naval blockade of the island.

Valerio Fabbri, writing in Portal Plus said that China is behaving like a cornered cat after the stormy visit of US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to Taiwan which does not augur well for the small island nation.

On the one hand, China has curtailed necessary sensitive communication links with the United States. On the other, it has launched a strategy of steadily increasing its posture of aggression against Taiwan.

China’s invasion of Taiwan may soon become a question of time and opportunity, said Fabbri.

China is currently not acting rationally. Immediately after her visit, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) government launched a four-day relentless naval exercise in the waters around Taiwan. Chinese officers resorted to live firing, which is usually a later stage exercise of operational readiness. Over 50 warships and 200 Chinese military aircraft were involved in the exercise.

China Central Television (CCT), the state broadcaster, quoted Meng Xiangqing, a professor at the PLA-affiliated National Defence University, as saying that the naval exercise was aimed to “completely smash the so-called median line’ and demonstrate China’s ability to prevent foreign intervention in a conflict by blockading and controlling the Bashi Channel, an important waterway between the western Pacific Ocean and the South China Sea”.

China has indeed exhibited unusually aggressive and war-like military postures against most countries it has disputes with after Xi Jinping came to power, reported Portal Plus.

It occupied the rocky shoals in the South China Sea, it established a defence identification zone over Senkaku Island.

Correctly guessing that the world community would rattle but not act against it, China changed the status quo around Senkaku Island.

It now wants to use the Pelosi visit to change the status quo in its favour in the Taiwan Strait. With its growing size as an economic and military giant, the China of today is serious about flexing its muscles to thwart any — read American — attempt to accost or question its motives in Asia.

China is now sending a clear message to the United States that the more the latter tries to prop up money and armaments for the defence of Taiwan, the more it will squeeze the island and contain its freedom to operation off its shores.

Meanwhile, in addition to its aggressive posturing against Taiwan, China has also severed its lines of communication with the United States on defence, climate, and other diplomatic issues in response to the Pelosi visit. (ANI)