China’s military buildup in the southern portion of the first island chain poses a serious threat to Taiwan’s liquefied natural gas (LNG) supply, a defense analyst warned.
China said on Wednesday that Taiwan was seeking to give away the island's semiconductor industry to the United States as a "souvenir" and leverage it to seek political support from Washington.
China is flexing its military muscle in the region to show that it will not wait for the Trump administration to decide how hard it wants to counter Beijing.
A Chinese freighter that allegedly snapped an undersea cable linking Taiwan proper to Penghu County is suspected of being owned by a Chinese state-run company and had docked at the ports of Kaohsiung and Keelung for three months using different names.
China's government said on Wednesday that Taiwan was "manipulating" possible Chinese involvement in the latest severing of an undersea communications cable, saying the island was casting aspersions before the facts were clear.
Putin welcomed the idea of sweeping joint defense cuts and suggested the world's biggest defense spender could join.