WATCH: Chinese warplanes, ships taunting Taiwan as Pelosi arrives
WND Staff
'We will not take the bait or engage in sabre rattling,' says White House
U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., arrived in Taiwan Tuesday, but not before China reportedly escalated military deployments near the contested island.
Reuters reported Chinese warplanes buzzed the unofficial dividing line between Chinese and Taiwanese waters, as military aircraft from Taiwan were standing by to respond.
In a "very provocative" manner, a number of Chinese warships also passed through waters adjacent to the island Tuesday, teaming with the aircraft to put pressure on the median line.
"The Chinese Communist Party is raising the specter of war and should be punished for doing so ... . We need to act in such a way that the CCP sees that its security has been degraded, not improved, because it threatened the Speaker," Jacqueline Deal, senior fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute and president and CEO of the Long Term Strategy Group, told the Daily Caller News Foundation.
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Social-media users in China posted videos of troops and tanks rolling through the southern Chinese city of Xiamen toward the Fujian province coast, which borders the Taiwan Strait.
Reuters also reported the website of Taiwan's government suffered a brief outage Tuesday due a foreign cyberattack.
Taiwan's ministry of defense identified air activity in the strait on Monday and said it will mobilize as needed to address "enemy threats."
"We are closely following the itinerary of Speaker Pelosi," Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian said Monday.
"A visit to Taiwan by her would ... greatly threaten peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait, severely undermine China-US relations and lead to a very serious situation and grave consequences."
"We will not take the bait or engage in sabre rattling. At the same time, we will not be intimidated," White House spokesman John Kirby said during a briefing on Monday.
The DCNF noted, "The White House and Pentagon cautioned Pelosi against the visit over fears it could ignite a conflict with China. The U.S. currently has two ships, an aircraft carrier and an amphibious vessel, operating in the strait."
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