#taiwan-china-tensions

#taiwan-china-tensions

“Right now I'm just about 100 miles off the coast of mainland China,” is how Dokoupil began Wednesday night's broadcast from the balcony of a hotel in Taipei, Taiwan. Tony was being kind to himself: Taipei may be very close to mainland China itself, but it is 1,000 miles away from Beijing, where all of the important stuff was happening. The reason Dokoupil was stuck on that hotel balcony is that CBS failed to secure a visa for their man. Semafor's Max Tani reported that as a result the network had to send Dokoupil to Taipei at the last minute.

When the LDP's conservative wing forced a leadership election to replace the embattled Ishiba in October last year, many expected his ally Shinjiro Koizumi the young, telegenic son of a previous prime minister to win. Instead, Japan's party of government for most of the past seven decades took a gamble on his ultra-conservative rival, Sanae Takaichi, installing her as the country's first female prime minister.

Taiwan's government has accused China of breaching international law by drilling for oil and gas inside Taiwan's exclusive economic zone (EEZ) and immediately demanded it halt the activity. The statement from the office of Taiwan's president, Lai Ching-te, came after revelations first reported by the Guardian that several Chinese oil rigs and associated vessels had been detected inside Taiwan's EEZ, near the disputed Pratas Islands, which are under Taiwanese control.