Beijing slapped sanctions on a pair of US defense giants on Friday in response to US weapons sales to Taiwan.
“To defend China’s sovereignty and security interests, the Chinese government has decided to sanction Gregory J. Hayes, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Raytheon Technologies Corporation, and Theodore Colbert III., President and Chief Executive Officer of Boeing Defense, Space & Security, who were involved in the latest arms sale,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning said in a briefing Thursday.
Mao urged the US government and companies to abide by the One China principle and the provisions of Sino-US communiques on relations, to halt arms sales and scrap military contacts with Taipei, and to “stop creating factors that could lead to tensions in the Taiwan Strait.”
“China will continue to take all necessary measures in light of the situation to firmly defend is own sovereignty and security interests,” the spokeswoman stressed.
The restrictions were enforced less than 24 hours after State Department spokesman Ned Price announced that the Biden administration would “continue” to deepen the US-Taiwan “partnership” through “effective diplomatic, economic and military support.”
China-US tensions over Taiwan experienced a fresh escalation on Wednesday after the Senate Foreign Relations Committee advanced controversial draft legislation called the ‘Taiwan Policy Act of 2022.’
The bipartisan bill calls on Washington to provide Taipei with $4.5 billion in additional ‘security assistance’, and a $2 billion loan guarantee authority for Taipei to purchase additional military equipment. The legislation also proposes designating Taiwan as a ‘major non-NATO ally’ to the US, and directs Washington to engage with the “democratic government of Taiwan,” deeming the later to be the legitimate representative of the island’s inhabitants. The bill instructs the Pentagon to establish joint training with Taiwan’s defense forces, and directs the State Department to submit a strategy to address alleged economic coercion by China against countries which increase support for Taiwan.
If passed, the legislation would pose a direct violation of US commitments to the One China principle and communiques on US-China relations, which prohibit Washington from having formal diplomatic ties with Taipei, and recognizes the People’s Republic as the sole sovereign state in the international community going by the name ‘China’ (Taiwan formally calls itself the ‘Republic of China’ but the US dropped formal recognition in 1979).
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The bipartisan legislation, which has now advanced for consideration by the full Senate, comes amid already aggravated tensions between Beijing and Washington over Taiwan following House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s provocative tip to the island in early August. Her visit has been followed up by additional visits to Taipei by other US lawmakers.
Beijing reacted to the trips by Pelosi and her colleagues by launching a series of large-scale war games around the island.
Taiwan broke off from mainland China at the end of the Chinese Civil War in 1949, with Kuomintang nationalist forces fleeing to the island after Mao Zedong’s Communists won control over the rest of the country.
The People’s Republic never recognized Taiwan as a self-ruling territory, instead characterizing it as a renegade province destined for eventual reunification with the mainland under the ‘One China, Two Systems’ model applied to Hong Kong and Macau. Chinese President Xi Jinping has made Taiwan’s reunification a central plank of his national rejuvenation campaign.