China to hold military drills around Taiwan after US speaker meeting

China will hold three days of military exercises around Taiwan starting from Saturday, the People’s Liberation Army announced, the day after Taiwanese president Tsai Ing-wen returned from a trip to the United States.

China would hold “combat readiness patrols” and exercises in the Taiwan Strait and to the north, south and east of Taiwan “as planned”, the army’s eastern theatre command said in a brief statement.

Tsai met the US House speaker, Kevin McCarthy, while in Los Angeles in Wednesday, angering Beijing, which views Taiwan as its own territory.

China had threatened unspecified retaliation if the meeting took place, having staged war games around Taiwan including live-fire missile launches in August after then-House speaker Nancy Pelosi visited Taipei.

Taiwanese officials had expected a less severe reaction to the McCarthy meeting given it took place in the US, but nonetheless had also said they could not rule out the possibility of China staging more drills.