Beijing sends warning to US with a new aircraft carrier to patrol South China Sea
Beijing has warned that its new aircraft carrier will “thwart” attempts by foreign forces to seize disputed territories in the South China Sea as it objected to the US signing a deal that will allow American ships to be deployed to Taiwan.
President Trump this week signed a National Defense Authorization Act that allows the US and Taiwan to deploy ships into each other’s waters. In response, Li Kexin, from the Chinese embassy in Washington, warned that if the US sailed ships into the port of Kaohsiung, Taiwan’s second biggest city, Beijing would attack the island.... Mr Li said: “The day that a US navy vessel arrives in Kaohsiung is the day that our People’s Liberation Army unifies Taiwan with military force.”
People’s Daily, the Chinese Communist Party’s mouthpiece newspaper, said that China’s unnamed first domestically built aircraft carrier would begin trials soon. It said that the ship, the second aircraft carrier in China’s fleet, was a “symbol of state power” that will “thwart the containment and blockade policies of some powers”. Beijing engaged in a show of force after the editorial was published. Chinese bombers with cruise missiles performed “island encirclement patrols” around Taiwan........