Taiwan raises alarm about renewed military threats from 'unstable' China
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00:00Now, Taiwan's defence ministry is raising the alarm about a renewed surge of Chinese military activity around the island and also live fire drills.
00:10Taiwan accusing Beijing of policy instability that presents a serious challenge to its neighbours.
00:17Of course, democratically governed Taiwan, which Beijing views as its own territory, has complained of stepped up Chinese military activity for years.
00:25Well, let's cross then to Taipei, talk to correspondent Jan Kamins in Broomby.
00:29Bring us up to date, first of all, with exactly what the defence ministry is saying.
00:33Why is it raising the alarm here?
00:39That's right. The defence ministry in Taiwan raising the alarm as a result of these live fire exercises
00:45and as a result, actually, of a large number of aircraft that have been operating around the island of Taiwan.
00:52It's reportedly 29 today. It was something like 43 yesterday.
00:57Now, China has been, as you mentioned, increasing its pressure on Taiwan steadily over the last few years
01:04and sending aircraft around the island is not something new.
01:07But clearly, this was enough, enough of an escalation, enough of an increase in the number of those aircraft
01:13and live fire exercises to prompt that warning from the Taiwanese government here.
01:19The press office of the president saying, accusing China of destabilizing and altering the status
01:25or trying to alter the status quo across the Taiwan Strait.
01:29And it's not just Taiwan. China and Japan have also been engaging in what seems to be
01:34a range of tit for tat exercises also in the region.
01:38China sending ships into Japan's contiguous waters for the first time
01:42and aeroplanes in and around, aeroplanes around Japanese airspace prompting Japan to,
01:47for the first time ever, sail through the Taiwan Strait just earlier today.
01:52How much are people following this there? I mean, presumably people have been very aware of the problem
01:58for many years, but is there renewed people being even more anxious than normal at the moment?
02:05Well, that's really the interesting thing.
02:09Of course, all the responses and reactions I mentioned there are on the governmental level,
02:14the departmental level, the state to state level.
02:17But when you walk around in Taipei, life really seems to go on as normal.
02:21I was having a look earlier at Google search results for the Chinese activities.
02:26They weren't even in the top 25 Google search results in Taiwan at the moment.
02:31So people in Taiwan are really going about their lives in a normal way.
02:35Many of those people here have grown up with the looming specter of China for all of their lives, essentially.
02:43Since 1995, we've seen a response from them that kind of matches these kinds of things,
02:50using military pressure to pressure Taiwan and its people.