China Threatens Reaction After U.S. Announces Arms Sales to Taiwan

On Sep 4, 2022

China threatened over the weekend to take countermeasures after the Biden administration approved the sale of more than $1.1 billion worth of arms to Taiwan.

A spokesman for the Chinese Embassy in Washington said the sale of military equipment to Taiwan, designed to repel a seaborne invasion from China, would “severely jeopardize China-US relations and peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait.”

In a series of messages posted to Twitter on Saturday, Liu Pengyu, the spokesman, also called on the United States to “immediately revoke” the decision to approve the arms sale, which was announced on Friday after the Biden administration formally notified Congress. It will still need approval by Congress, which is considered likely.

The deal is the largest for Taiwan under the Biden administration, said Drew Thompson, a senior research fellow at the National University of Singapore, on Sunday. While some sales, including during the Trump administration, were larger, this one reinforces that Taiwan wants to have “a larger supply of war reserve munitions on hand in advance of a conflict.”

China claims Taiwan, a self-governing democracy, as its own and has accused the United States of interfering with its internal affairs even though the ruling Communist Party has never controlled the island.

The State Department said that the sales were part of a long-established U.S. policy of providing weapons to Taiwan. But the move comes as tensions in the Taiwan Strait have reached their highest level in decades and the U.S.-China relationship is fraying over a range of economic and political issues.

The United States has maintained tariffs the Trump administration imposed on hundreds of billions of dollars’ worth of Chinese goods, even as President Biden considers rolling back some. And American officials boycotted the Beijing Winter Olympics in February to protest Chinese human rights abuses, including a crackdown in the Xinjiang region that the United States has called genocidal.

Agencies