Taiwan’s President Tsai Ing-wen has called the Chinese maneuvers around the island’s democratic republic “irresponsible”. In a video address late Thursday evening, the President urged Chinese leaders to exercise common sense and exercise restraint. Taiwan will not escalate tensions but wants to maintain the status quo. Your government is working to make Taiwan’s ports and airports run smoothly and to stabilize the financial markets.
The President thanked the G7 group of the seven leading industrial nations together with the European Union for their support. The G7 had expressed concern and stressed that there was no reason to use a visit as a pretext “for aggressive military activities”. China launched the maneuvers on Tuesday in response to US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan. It was the highest-ranking visit from the United States in a quarter of a century.
In Beijing, ambassadors of EU countries and the representative of the EU delegation were summoned to the foreign ministry on Thursday, where they were handed a formal protest against the G7 statement, China’s foreign office reported on Friday.