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China to conduct exercise near Taiwan due to "wrong signals" from US — Defense Ministry

On Thursday, a US delegation under Republican Senator Lindsey Graham had arrived at the island on a brief, undeclared visit

BEIJING, April 15. /TASS/. China's air and naval forces will conduct an exercise in the East China Sea and around Taiwan due to the United States' "wrong signals" regarding the island's status, the Chinese army's Eastern Battle Zone Command said on Friday.

"On April 15, the Eastern Battle Zone Command will conduct a joint exercise to check the combat readiness of several arms and services in the East China Sea and around Taiwan. Destroyers, frigates, bombers, fighters and other forces will take part," the news release says.

"These actions are aimed against repeated wrong signals from the United States regarding Taiwan," the news release reads. "This ill-considered behavior and machinations by the United States are utterly futile. At the same time, they are very dangerous. It is play with fire."

Taiwan's central news agency has said that a US delegation under Republican Senator Lindsey Graham had arrived at the island on a brief, undeclared visit on Thursday evening. This group of politicians, among them several prominent senators, made a stopover in Taipei on the way home from Australia on a military plane. According to the news agency, the US officials were scheduled to meet with the chief of Taiwan's administration Tsai Ing-wen and heads of a number of agencies on Friday.

The United States severed diplomatic relations with Taiwan in 1979 to have established diplomatic relations with China. While recognizing the "one China" policy, Washington maintains contacts with the self-ruled island and supplies it with military hardware. This has repeatedly drawn strong protests from Beijing, which regards Taiwan as an integral part of Chinese territory and resolutely opposes any separatist designs.

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