China’s ambitions reach beyond island, Taiwan says

Officials of the self-governing island, which China claims as its own, said Tuesday that China’s military exercises in the Taiwan Strait are not just oriented toward taking back control of Taiwan, but show ambition to control much of the western Pacific. Taiwan’s military conducted its own live-fire drills Tuesday morning to demonstrate its ability to fight back against an invasion. Taiwanese Foreign Minister Joseph Wu said China’s drills were long in the making, but U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to the island provided a pretext for launching them.

What does the United States say? While Taiwan’s statements betray a grim outlook, U.S. officials share some concern that China may seek to expand its influence in the Pacific. Pelosi dismissed China’s military exercises as a “political stunt” and said that Xi Jinping is behaving like a “scared bully.”

Dig deeper: Read June Cheng’s report from the WORLD archives on a book describing the bloody history of the Chinese Communist Party.