At a regular briefing on Friday, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin offered US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to pay visits to Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and Libya and apologize for the killing of civilians by the US military.
"If Pelosi really cares about democracy and human rights, she'd better visit Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and Libya, where she can express remorse for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of civilians at the hands of the US military. There, she could also promise that such acts of cruelty, which were caused by the US violations of the UN Charter and norms of international law, would not be repeated," pointed out the diplomat.
He noted that Pelosi's visit to Taiwan was a "serious political provocation" that violated the "one China" principle and the provisions of the Three Joint Communiqués. "Her visit had nothing to do with democracy, it was a political prank that went against the will of the 1.4 billion Chinese people, including our compatriots in Taiwan. It was also a challenge to the "one China" principle, which is widely recognized in the international community," he said.
The situation in the Taiwan Strait area and throughout the Asia-Pacific region escalated after Pelosi's Aug. 2-3 trip to Taipei, which drew sharp criticism from mainland China. Beijing has repeatedly warned Washington that it would retaliate if the visit by Pelosi, the third most important post in the US government hierarchy, took place. China's armed forces began large-scale military maneuvers with missile firing in six areas of Taiwan's waters on August 4, which were scheduled to end on August 7, but were extended indefinitely. On August 10, a spokesman for the Eastern Zone Combat Command of the People's Liberation Army of China said that all of the objectives of the exercises conducted in recent days had been completed, but did not specify whether they had been completed.
Taiwan is governed by its own administration since 1949, when the remnants of the Kuomintang led by Chiang Kai-shek (1887-1975) fled there after being defeated in the Chinese Civil War. Since then the island retains the flag and some other attributes of the former Republic of China, which existed on the mainland before the Communists came to power. Official Beijing considers Taiwan one of the provinces of the People's Republic of China.
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Based on materials from TASS