beijing china on monday stepped up its unprecedented military drills around taiwan staging fresh exercises and extending the schedule of its war games launched in retaliation to the visit by us house speaker nancy pelosi to taipei by attempting to strangle the selfruled islandthe chinese military exercises kicked off after pelosi angered beijing by visiting taipei last week to show her support for democracy on the island which china views as a rebel province that must be reunified with the mainland even by forceon august 8 the eastern theatre command of the chinese peoples liberation army pla continued to carry out joint combat training exercises in the waters and airspace around taiwan island mainly focusing on the joint antisubmarine and airtosea assault operations the defence ministry here said in a brief announcementthe four drills involved all wings of the chinese armed forces including the missile forces aircraft carrier group besides hundreds of warplanes conducted the drills all around the island venting beijings anger over pelosis visit which china says has changed the status quo of taiwan as part of chinese mainland under onechina policychinese defence ministry spokesperson senior colonel wu qian said the current tensions across the taiwan strait has been a result of provocative acts singlehandedly created by the us for which it must hold accountable and bear full responsibility for the serious consequences of itchina urges the us side to earnestly respect its core interests and major concerns abandon any illusion of containing china with taiwan and not go even further down the wrong path he saidon monday taiwans defence ministry said 13 pla naval vessels and 39 aircraft were detected in taiwans surrounding regionthe taiwan armed forces monitored the situation and responded to these activities with aircraft naval vessels and landbased missile systems the ministry tweetedtwentyone of the chinese aircraft had flown on the east part of the median line of the taiwan strait dividing china and taiwan and the air identification defence zone adiz it saidit is not clear when china plans to end the provocative drillsobservers say china which has stepped up the highvoltage drills is in a dilemma to restore normalcy without tangible political and strategic gains as beijing also faced rare criticism among the chinese public for its failure to stop pelosi from going to taiwanthe drills were also seen as an attempt to reclaim the image of president xi jinping who is widely expected to get a rare third term at the upcoming ruling onceinafiveyear ruling communist party congressxis predecessors have retired after two fiveyear termsmeanwhile reports from taipei the capital of taiwan said the highintensity chinese military drills served as a boost to antibeijing sentimentsactually her pelosis visit was welcomed by the majority of the people in taiwan and only some hardline prounification groups were against it wang kungyi head of the taiwan international strategic study society a taipeis think tank saidhe said pelosis visit and beijings furious response had given taiwan muchneeded international attentionthis will also help increase the popularity