68 China jets, 13 warships cross median line: Taiwan defence ministry

Beijing cancels US defence talks, slaps sanctions on Pelosi for Taiwan visit

Taipei’s military said 68 Chinese fighter jets and 13 warships crossed the “median line” that runs down the Taiwan Strait during Friday's military drills by China’s forces.

China on Friday continued its most provocative military drills in decades and cut off defence talks with the US, as relations between the world’s biggest economies deteriorate in the wake of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s trip to Taiwan.

A day after likely firing missiles over the island of 23 million people, China sent warships across the Taiwan Strait’s median line in the first such incursion in years. The People’s Liberation Army also sent warplanes across the US-defined boundary, Taiwan’s Defence Ministry said, the third straight day of such flights since Pelosi’s visit.

The Chinese Foreign Ministry announced unspecified sanctions against Pelosi and her immediate family over what it said was her “egregious provocation.” Although largely symbolic, the move makes the House speaker the highest-ranking American official sanctioned by Beijing. The action was announced shortly after Pelosi left Japan after wrapping up her dramatic 

weeklong trip. 

In addition to halting talks with the US on defense, China announced it would cancel a dialogue with military leaders and halt discussions on climate -- one area where the two nations had found common ground in recent years. 

“China has chosen to overreact and use Speaker Pelosi’s visit as a pretext to increase provocative military activity,” US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Friday. “There is no justification for this extreme, disproportionate and escalatory military response.”