The Chinese People's Liberation Army (PLA) will continue to carry out military exercises and resolutely safeguard the sovereignty and territorial integrity of China, Chinese Defense Ministry spokesperson Wu Qian said on Monday. He expressed China's firm resolve, saying the PLA will resolutely crush any secessionist attempts for "Taiwan independence" and external interference in China's internal affairs.

Senior Colonel Shi Yi, spokesperson for the PLA Eastern Theater Command, confirmed that the PLA's Eastern Theater Command has organized multi-unit joint combat readiness patrols and real-combat drills in the sea areas and airspaces around the Taiwan island on Monday.

Just 12 days after US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi paid a provocative visit to the island of Taiwan, a US congressional delegation, led by Democratic Senator Edward J. Markey of Massachusetts, made a sudden visit to the island on Sunday and was scheduled to meet with Taiwan regional officials from Sunday to Monday, the Taiwan authorities announced on Sunday.

Wu Qian said that the US senators' visit to the island is a blatant violation of the one-China principle and the three China-US joint communiques, infringes on China's sovereignty and territorial integrity, sends a wrong signal to the Taiwan secessionist forces, and has fully exposed the US's role of spoiling and destroying the peace and stability in the Taiwan Straits.

The joint combat exercises and training conducted by the PLA Eastern Theater Command in the sea areas and airspaces around the island is a resolute response and a solemn deterrent to the US-Taiwan collusion and provocation, he noted.

Taiwan is part of China, and the Taiwan question is purely China's domestic affair and brooks no foreign interference, Wu said. He warned the US and the DPP authorities that "seeking independence" with US support will go nowhere, and using the Taiwan question to contain China is also doomed to fail.

Any individual or force attempting to interfere in China's internal affairs and obstruct China's national reunification will find themselves on a collision course with a great wall of steel forged by over 1.4 billion Chinese people, Wu remarked.

Global Times