China is extremely dissatisfied with Japan’s holding of joint naval exercises with Taiwan and strongly opposes it, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Lin Jian said at a briefing on Friday.
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Earlier, NHK reported that coast guard patrol ships from Japan and Taiwan conducted their first joint search and rescue exercise on Thursday morning.
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“We are extremely dissatisfied with the joint maritime exercise between Japan and Taiwan, we strongly oppose it and have already made a stern representation to the Japanese side,” Lin Jian said.
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He recalled that Japan has made commitments on the Taiwan issue, including not supporting Taiwan’s independence. According to him, Japan should follow this position and principles.
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Japan and the Taiwanese government do not have diplomatic relations, but they signed a memorandum of understanding in 2017 to cooperate in search and rescue efforts in the event of maritime incidents through their respective organizations. Thursday’s exercise was part of an exchange between the two organizations.
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Official relations between the central government of China and its island province were interrupted in 1949 after the Kuomintang forces led by Chiang Kai-shek, defeated in the civil war with the Chinese Communist Party, moved to Taiwan. Business and informal contacts between the island and mainland China resumed in the late 1980s. Since the early 1990s, the parties began to contact through non-governmental organizations – the Beijing Association for the Development of Relations across the Taiwan Strait and the Taipei Cross-Strait Exchange Foundation.
