The recent Chinese actions around House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's visit to Taiwan are fundamentally at odds with the goal of peace and stability, the White House said, adding that Beijing is going to continue its pressure campaign against Taiwan.
"China's actions are fundamentally at odds with the goal of peace and stability. They are part of an intensified pressure campaign against Taiwan, which has not ended, and we expect it to continue to unfold in the coming weeks and months. The goal of this campaign is clear—to intimidate and coerce Taiwan and undermine its resilience," Kurt Campbell, Deputy Assistant to the President and Coordinator for the Indo Pacific, told reporters during a conference call.
The United States, he said, will continue to take calm and resolute steps to uphold peace and stability in the face of Beijing's ongoing efforts to undermine it, and to support Taiwan, in line with its longstanding policy.
"These steps, across a range of areas, will unfold over the coming weeks and months because the challenge is long term. We will not be reflexive or knee-jerk, we will be patient and effective," Campbell said.
China on Thursday renewed its threat to attack Taiwan following almost a week of war games near the island. Taiwan has called Beijing's claims to the self-governing democracy wishful thinking" and launched its own military exercises.
Taiwan's collusion with external forces to seek independence and provocation will only accelerate their own demise and push Taiwan into the abyss of disaster, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin said at a daily briefing. Their pursuit of Taiwan independence will never succeed, and any attempt to sell the national interest will be met with a complete failure," Wang told reporters.
China's attempt to intimidate the Taiwanese public and advertise its strategy for blockading and potentially invading the island was nominally prompted by a visit to Taipei last week by US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. The US, Japan and allies have denounced the exercises, with the Group of Seven industrialised nations issuing a statement at a recent meeting expressing its concern.
On Wednesday, Britain's government summoned Chinese Ambassador Zheng Zeguang to the Foreign Office to demand an explanation of "Beijing's aggressive and wide-ranging escalation against Taiwan. Taiwan says Beijing used Pelosi's visit as a pretext to raise the stakes in its feud with Taipei, firing missiles into the Taiwan Strait and over the island into the Pacific Ocean. China also sent planes and ships across the midline in the strait that has long been a buffer between the sides, which separated amid civil war in 1949.
