U.S. Urged to Revoke Arms Sales to Taiwan

Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi has become the latest high-ranking Chinese official to take issue with the United States over its latest announced arms sale to Taiwan.

CRI's Su Yi has more.

Yang Jiechi has joined a chorus of other Chinese officials, calling the US move wrong, and pressing the Americans to reverse the decision.

Yang also says the move has the potential to destabilize cross-strait ties.

He's made the statement in New York on the sidelines of the annual general debate of the United Nations General Assembly.

Despite repeated calls by the Chinese government to stop selling arms to Taiwan, the U.S. administration announced Wednesday a new arms package worth 5.85 billion U.S. dollars to upgrade 145 of Taiwan's fighter jets.

Yang said the US is once again ignoring the improvement of the peaceful ties that have developed between the mainland and Taiwan.

In Beijing, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei is warning that the move will damage US military and security ties with Beijing.

"The Chinese government and people strongly opposes it. The mistakes made by the US inevitably hurt bilateral relations and cooperation in military and security of the two countries. The US takes full responsibility for that."

Meanwhile, Chinese Defense Ministry spokesman Geng Yansheng said the plan of U.S. to sell arms to Taiwan will create severe obstacles for normal military-to-military exchanges.

The Defense Ministsry has summoned the acting U.S. military attache to China to lodge a strong protest.

The move follows similar protests to US Ambassador Gary Locke.

Tao Wenzhao is a senior researcher with the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.

"China-US cooperation has been expanding in various areas and our mutual interests have been growing. Under such circumstances, Washington's continuous arms sales to Taiwan runs counter to the good momentum of China-US cooperation. I think the latest arms sales will mainly affect the security cooperation between the two countries. In fact, the military relationship is the weak point in the overall China-US relations, and the major obstacle in developing bilateral military ties is the US arms sales to Taiwan."

The Pentagon's last arms deal with Taiwan came in January of last year.

In the wake of that move, China suspended several of its military exchange programs with the US, which only recently became normalized again.

For CRI, I'm SU Yi.