China deployed planes and ships to encircle Taiwan on Monday, in drills Beijing said were aimed at sending a “stern warning” to “separatist” forces on the self-ruled island.

Beijing has not ruled out using force to bring Taiwan under its control and Monday’s drills represent its fourth round of large-scale war games in the past two years.

China’s drills come days after US Secretary of State Antony Blinken warned Beijing against taking action in response to a speech by Taiwanese President Lai Ching-te during the island’s National Day celebrations.

Lai, who took office in May, has been more outspoken than his predecessor Tsai Ing-wen in defending Taiwan’s sovereignty, angering Beijing, which calls him a “separatist”. Taiwan condemned the latest exercises as “irrational and provocative” and said it has dispatched “appropriate forces” in response.

AFP journalists near the Hsinchu air force base, in the north of Taiwan, saw four fighter jets take off on Monday.

The drills, dubbed Joint Sword-2024B, “test the joint operations capabilities of the theater command’s troops”, Beijing said.

They are taking place in “areas to the north, south and east of Taiwan Island,” said Captain Li Xi, spokesman for the Chinese military’s Eastern Theater Command.

The drills are “focusing on subjects of sea-air combat-readiness patrol, blockade on key ports and areas”, Li said.

They also practised an “assault on maritime and ground targets” and “joint seizure of comprehensive superiority”.

China’s coast guard was also dispatched to conduct “inspections” around the island.

A diagram released by the coast guard showed four fleets encircling Taiwan and moving in an anticlockwise direction around the island.

Taiwan said it had detected “convoys” of China coast guard ships “in our northern, southwest and eastern waters”.

China has ramped up military activity around Taiwan in recent years, sending in warplanes and other military aircraft while its ships maintain a near-constant presence around the island’s waters.

Taiwan said Sunday it had detected a Chinese aircraft carrier group to its south in the Bashi Channel, a waterway that separates the island from the Philippines, that appeared to be heading towards the western Pacific.

“In the face of enemy threats, all officers and soldiers of the country are in full readiness,” Taiwan’s defence ministry said Monday.

“We are determined and confident to ensure national defence security.” – ‘Provocations’ – In his speech on Thursday, Lai vowed to “resist annexation” of the island, and insisted Beijing and Taipei were “not subordinate to each other”. China warned after the speech that Lai’s “provocations” would result in “disaster” for the people of Taiwan. Beijing on Monday said the drills were “a legitimate and necessary operation for safeguarding state sovereignty and national unity”. Beijing’s state broadcaster CCTV released a video warning: “the greater the provocation, the tighter the reins”. The current dispute between China and Taiwan dates back to a civil war in which the nationalist forces of Chiang Kai-shek were defeated by Mao Zedong’s communist fighters and fled to Taiwan in 1949. Lai’s Democratic Progressive Party has long defended the sovereignty and democracy of Taiwan, which has its own government, military and currency. Beijing has sought to erase Taipei from the international stage, blocking it from global forums and poaching its diplomatic allies.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

Palestinian Territories:

The United States said Friday that progress had been made at the latest round of Gaza truce talks after the presence of Israeli troops on the Egyptian border emerged as a major sticking point.

The White House said CIA chief William Burns was among US officials taking part in the discussions in Cairo, joining the heads of Israel’s spy agency and security service.

“There has been progress made. We need now for both sides to come together and work towards implementation,” US National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said.

Preliminary talks that began Thursday “were constructive in nature”, he said, adding that reports that the diplomacy was “near collapse” were inaccurate.

An Egyptian source close to the negotiations told AFP the Egyptian and Qatari intelligence chiefs were also taking part.

“The discussions are taking place in Cairo… in preparation for an enlarged round of negotiations which will begin on Sunday,” the source said.

“Washington is discussing with mediators new proposals to bridge the gap between Israel and Hamas and for mechanisms to implement” the plan.

According to the White House, US President Joe Biden discussed the upcoming talks by telephone Friday with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi and Qatari emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al-Thani.

The Egyptian source said Sunday’s negotiations would be “a pivotal step in formulating an agreement that will be announced if Washington can pressure (Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin) Netanyahu”.

Representatives of Hamas, whose unprecedented October 7 attack on Israel triggered the war in Gaza, were not attending the Cairo talks.

An official from the Islamist movement, Hossam Badran, told AFP Friday that Netanyahu’s insistence that his troops remain on a strip along the Gaza-Egypt border called the Philadelphi Corridor reflected “his refusal to reach a final agreement”.

Egypt, Qatar and the United States have for months tried to reach a deal to end more than 10 months of war between Israel and Hamas.

Previous optimism during months of on-off truce talks has proven unfounded.

Fighting raged on Friday, with witnesses reporting combat in northern, central and southern Gaza.

An overnight strike on a house west of the southern city of Khan Yunis killed 11 people — including four women and four children — and wounded a number of others, Gaza’s civil defence agency said early Saturday.

‘Exhausted and terrified’ 

The United Nations said tens of thousands of civilians had been on the move again from Deir el-Balah and Khan Yunis after Israeli evacuation orders, which precede military operations.

The war has displaced virtually all of Gaza’s population, often multiple times, leaving them deprived of shelter, clean water and other essentials as disease spreads, the UN says.

“Civilians are exhausted and terrified, running from one destroyed place to another, with no end in sight,” Muhannad Hadi, the UN humanitarian coordinator for the Palestinian territories, said late Thursday.

Hamas’s October 7 attack on southern Israel resulted in the deaths of 1,199 people, most of them civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli official figures.

Israel’s retaliatory military campaign has killed 40,265 Palestinians in Gaza, according to the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry, which does not give details of civilian and militant deaths. The UN rights office says most of the dead are women and children.

Palestinian militants also seized 251 hostages, of whom 105 remain in Gaza, including 34 the military says are dead.

Israel’s military recovered the remains of six hostages from a tunnel in the Khan Yunis area this week.

Netanyahu faces regular protests by hostage supporters demanding a deal to bring them home.

Ella Ben Ami, whose father is a hostage, said after meeting Netanyahu Friday that she “left with a heavy and difficult feeling that this (ceasefire deal) isn’t going to happen soon”, according to a statement from campaign group the Hostages and Missing Families Forum.

‘Now is the time’ 

Diplomatic efforts to reach a Gaza truce and avert a wider war intensified following the killings of two senior Iran-backed militants last month that sparked threats of reprisals from Tehran and its allies, who blamed Israel.

Lebanon’s Iran-backed Hezbollah movement and Israeli forces have exchanged near-daily cross-border fire since the Gaza war began.

Lebanon said Israeli strikes killed eight people, including a child, in the south on Friday, with Hezbollah saying the other seven dead were fighters.

A war monitor said Israeli strikes on central Syria Friday killed three Iran-backed fighters.

Accepting her Democratic Party’s presidential nomination in Chicago, US Vice President Kamala Harris said “Now is the time to get a hostage deal and a ceasefire deal done”.

The basis of talks has been a framework that Biden outlined in late May, which he described as an Israeli proposal.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken visited the Middle East this week and said Netanyahu was on board with a US proposal to bridge gaps and reach a ceasefire.

National Security Council spokesman Kirby said Washington continued to believe that Netanyahu accepted the proposal and appealed again to Hamas to do the same.

Hamas official Badran reiterated Friday that the group “accepted the Biden plan” as originally outlined, and said Washington must pressure Netanyahu.

He said Hamas would accept “nothing less than the withdrawal of occupation forces, Philadelphi included”.

Netanyahu’s hard-right coalition relies on the support of members opposed to a truce, and his office rejected as “incorrect” media reports that the prime minister “has agreed that Israel will withdraw” from the Philadelphi Corridor.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi held wide-ranging talks with U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, on October 27.
| Photo Credit: AP

President Joe Biden has emphasised that the United States and China need to manage competition in the relationship responsibly and maintain open lines of communication as he met Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi ahead of a potential meeting with President Xi Jinping next month to reset bilateral ties.

President Biden met Wang at the White House on October 27 after the top Chinese diplomat held wide-ranging talks with U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan. Wang’s visit is expected to lay the groundwork for a potential meeting between Mr. Biden and Chinese President Xi at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Summit in San Francisco in mid-November.

“The President emphasised that both the United States and China need to manage competition in the relationship responsibly and maintain open lines of communication. He underscored that the United States and China must work together to address global challenges,” the White House said in a readout of the meeting between Mr. Biden and Wang.

Mr. Sullivan and Wang had candid, constructive, and substantive discussions on key issues in the U.S.-China bilateral relationship, the Israel-Hamas conflict, Russia’s war against Ukraine, and cross-Strait issues, among other topics, said the National Security Council in a readout of the meeting.

During the meeting, Mr. Sullivan discussed concerns over China’s dangerous and unlawful actions in the South China Sea. He raised the importance of peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait.

Also read: View From India | Dispute in the South China Sea

China views Taiwan as a rebel province that must be reunified with the mainland, even by force. China has been conducting provocative military exercises around the self-ruled island.

“The two sides reaffirmed their desire to maintain this strategic channel of communication and to pursue additional high-level diplomacy, including working together towards a meeting between President Biden and President Xi Jinping in San Francisco in November,” said the readout.

State Department Spokesperson Matthew Miller said Mr. Blinken and Wang discussed a range of bilateral, regional, and global issues, including addressing areas of difference as well as exploring areas of cooperation.

“The Secretary reiterated that the United States will continue to stand up for our interests and values and those of our allies and partners,” he said.

The relationship between the world’s two largest economies began to deteriorate during the Trump administration. In 2018, former President Donald Trump signed an executive memorandum that would impose retaliatory tariffs on up to $60 billion in Chinese imports.

The U.S. and China have one of the world’s most important and complex bilateral relationships. Since 1949, the countries have experienced periods of both tension and cooperation over issues including trade, climate change, the South China Sea, Taiwan and the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Biden administration has sought to re-establish normal diplomatic ties with China after an incredibly fraught period, most notably over the Chinese surveillance balloon incident in February.