China has permanently left four warships around Taiwan, which were stationed in 2022 during exercises following a visit there by an American representative, to contain the island in peacetime, and in unforeseen situations to prevent US ships from approaching it, The Yomiuri newspaper claims cited several sources in the Japanese government.
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According to a map cited by the newspaper, ships surround the island on three sides – north, south and east, leaving an open coast facing China. Moreover, one of the ships is located west of the Senkaku Islands (Chinese name for Diaoyu), which Japan considers its territory.
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At the same time, Japanese Government Secretary General Yoshimasa Hayashi did not comment on the situation during a briefing on Monday.
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The situation around Taiwan escalated significantly after the visit of US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to the island in early August 2022. China, which considers the island one of its provinces, condemned Pelosi’s visit, seeing in this step US support for Taiwanese separatism, and held large-scale military exercises.
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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.
