Taiwan on Friday denounced its "malicious neighbor" after China surrounded the island with a series of massive military exercises that drew condemnation from the United States and other Western allies. During the exercises, which began Thursday and continue on Friday, China launched ballistic missiles and deployed fighter planes and warships around Taiwan. The Chinese People's Liberation Army declared several closed danger zones in the vicinity of Taiwan overlooking some of the most important shipping lanes in the world and located in certain locations only about 20 kilometers from the island's coast. Beijing said the exercises would continue until midday Sunday, while Taipei announced that Chinese fighters and ships crossed the "middle line" that runs through the Taiwan Strait on Friday morning. "Since the eleventh hour, several groups of Chinese warplanes and warships have conducted exercises around the Taiwan Strait and crossed the middle line of the strait," Taiwan's Defense Ministry said in a statement. The Middle Line is an unofficial but largely adhered to border that runs along the middle of the strait separating Taiwan and China. Chinese incursions have been repeated since Beijing announced in 2020 that these borders no longer exist. AFP reporters on Pingtan Island saw a fighter flying over the place where tourists took pictures of her as she flew over the coast. A Chinese military ship was also seen sailing through the Taiwan Strait. Beijing described the war games as a "necessary" response to the visit by US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to the self-ruled island, but Washington said China's leaders "chose to overreact". For his part, Taiwan's Prime Minister Su Tseng-chang called on his country's allies to press for de-escalation. "We did not expect the malicious neighbor to flex his power on our doorstep and to arbitrarily endanger the world's busiest waterways through his military exercises," he told reporters. Pelosi defended her visit on Friday, noting that Washington "will not allow" China to isolate Taiwan. "We have said from the beginning" that the visit "is not aimed at changing the status quo here in Asia, or changing the status quo in Taiwan," she told reporters in Tokyo, the last leg of her Asian tour. Later Friday, China responded by announcing sanctions against Pelosi and her close family without providing detailed information about the actions. In recent years, China has imposed sanctions on a number of US officials in response to what it considers to be actions contrary to its core interests and for statements relating to human rights in Hong Kong and the northwest Xinjiang region. - Missiles over Taiwan - The Chinese military announced that the exercises included a "conventional missile attack" in waters east of Taiwan. The Chinese news agency, Xinhua, stated that the Chinese army "launched more than 100 warplanes, including fighters and bombers" during the exercises, along with "more than ten destroyers and frigates." The official CCTV network reported that the Chinese missiles flew directly over Taiwan. Japan also pointed out that four of the nine missiles it detected "are believed to have flown over the main island of Taiwan." Taiwan's military refused to confirm the missile's trajectory in order to protect its intelligence capabilities and not to allow China to "intimidate us". - 'Big escalation' - The ruling Communist Party of China considers Taiwan part of its territory and has vowed to restore it one day, albeit by force. But the size and intensity of the exercises infuriated the United States and other democratic forces. "These provocative actions represent a significant escalation," US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken said after talks with foreign ministers from Southeast Asian countries in Benmou of China's military exercises in the vicinity of Taiwan

AFP