In Taiwan, Taiwan’s defense ministry said in a statement that it had detected a jet and three Chinese naval vessels in the waters around the island in the past 24 hours, on the day President Tsai Ing-wen met in Los Angeles US House Speaker Kevin McCarthy. The same ministry, late Wednesday evening, said that the Chinese aircraft carrier Shandong crossed the Bashi Channel and the waters southeast of Taiwan, demonstrating – according to the Beijing media – that it was “completely ready for open sea operations and to safeguard the national sovereignty and territorial integrity of China”.
Meanwhile, China is asking the United States to stop “gross interference” in what are considered Beijing’s “internal affairs”, warning that the People’s Liberation Army, which “always maintains a high level of alert, will resolutely defend the national sovereignty and territorial integrity, while steadfastly maintaining peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait”.
The position of the Ministry of Defense, among the various ones at an institutional level spread by Beijing on the matter, is the clear and peremptory response to the meeting held in California between the president of Taiwan Tsai Ing-wen and the speaker of the US House Kevin McCarthy.