China concludes military drills around Taiwan

(Update 1: changes lede, headline, adds details)

Beijing/Seoul, Aug 10 (EFE).- China has concluded its six-day war games around Taiwan held after a visit by the US House of Representatives speaker to the Island, the army announced on Wednesday.

“The PLA (People’s Liberation Army) has successfully completed various tasks and effectively tested the integrated joint combat capabilities of the troops,” the Eastern Theater Command of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army spokesman Shi Yi said.

The Chinese military will maintain regular exercises and normal operations in the area including patrols in the Taiwan Strait, the spokesperson added on Weibo, China’s Twitter.

The announcement was made a day after the Taiwan kicked off military drills to test its defensive capacity against a hypothetical invasion by China.

China’s military exercises, initially scheduled to last until Sunday, began on Thursday in response to Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan on Aug. 2.

The North Korean Workers’ Party sent a “letter of solidarity” to Beijing following Pelosi’s visit, according to state news outlet KCNA on Wednesday.

“The public junket to Taiwan, made by an incumbent US high-ranking official despite China’s strong protest and solemn warning and the universal opposition of the international community, was a serious infringement on China’s sovereignty and territorial integrity and an unpardonable political provocation aimed to defame the authority of the CPC and disturb the successful holding of its 20th Congress,” the official letter said.

The letter expressed “full support and solidarity” with all the steps taken by the Chinese government to “repulse the US arbitrariness, safeguard the territorial integrity of the state and achieve the reunification cause of the Chinese nation.”

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un also recently defended the friendship between Pyongyang and Beijing, which he said is “sealed in blood” and will continue to develop.

Taiwan, with whom the US does not maintain official relations, is one of the main sources of conflict between Beijing and Washington, above all because Washington is the main supplier of arms to the island and would be its greatest military ally in the event of a a war-like conflict with the Asian giant. EFE

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