Furious China “Outraged” By U.S. Sale Of $1.4BN In Weapons To Taiwan
One day after the US announced it would sell $1.42 billion in weapons to China’s offshore nemesis Taiwan, Beijing lashed out at the United States, saying it was “outraged” and demanded the US revoke immediately its “wrong decision”, saying it contradicted a “consensus” President Xi Jinping reached with his counterpart, Donald Trump, in talks in April in Florida.
The proposed U.S. package for Taiwan includes technical support for early warning radar, high speed anti-radiation missiles, torpedoes and missile components.
The sales would send a very wrong message to “Taiwan independence” forces, China’s embassy in Washington said in a statement. A U.S. State Department spokeswoman said on Thursday the administration had told Congress of seven proposed sales to Taiwan, the first under the Trump administration. “The Chinese government and Chinese people have every right to be outraged,” the embassy said.
Besides token bluster, however, this time China also warned that Trump’s action was counter to the agreement reached with Xi in Palm Beach, suggesting retaliation will likely be imminent. “The wrong move of the U.S. side runs counter to the consensus reached by the two presidents in and the positive development momentum of the China-U.S. relationship,” the embassy said.
This was the second major diplomatic escalation between the US and China in just the past 24 hours, with the US announcing late yesterday the first sanction imposed on Chinese entities for ties with North Korea, a move which likewise was slammed by the Chinese press.
As a reminder, one of Trump’s initial diplomatic snafus was to implicitly recognize Taiwan when he spoke over the phone with its president Tsai Ing-wen shortly after the election, in the process infuriating Beijing. China regards Taiwan as a wayward province and has never renounced the use of force to bring it under its control. China’s Nationalists fled to the island after losing the civil war with China’s Communists in 1949. The United States is the sole arms supplier to Taiwan.
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