U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Friday that China’s unprecedented military drills around Taiwan represented a “significant escalation” and that he has encouraged China to stop. Chinese authorities were enraged by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s trip to Taiwan—which China regards as part of its own territory—and launched huge military exercises in the Taiwan Strait involving warships, fighter jets, and ballistic missile launches. Some of the missiles are even reported to have landed inside Japan’s exclusive economic zone (EEZ). Speaking at the Association of Southeast Asian Nations in Cambodia, Blinken told reporters that Beijing had used Pelosi’s visit as a “pretext to increase provocative military activity in and around the Taiwan Strait.” He added: “I reiterated the points that we made publicly as well as directly to Chinese counterparts in recent days, again, about the fact that they should not use the visit as a pretext for war, escalation, for provocative actions, that there is no possible justification for what they’ve done and urge them to cease these actions."
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