As reported yesterday, tensions between China and Taiwan rose again when Beijing sailed its only aircraft carrier, the Liaoning, which over the weekend was "shown off" conducting dramatic military drills, around the southern tip of Taiwan passing southeast of the Pratas Islands, which are controlled by Taiwan, heading southwest.
Two days after China demonstratively showed off a live-fire exercise involving its one and only aircraft carrier, the Liaoning, in the Yellow Sea, with the Defense Ministry hinting that the carrier would next sail to the South China Sea after announcing that "as a next step it will conduct scheduled cross-sea training and tests," Beijing did just that and as Reuters reports, a group of Chinese warships led by the country's sole aircraft carrier passed south of Taiwan on Monday, and entered the top half of the South China Sea, in what China has termed a routine exercise.
Update: moments after the original post, Trump has corrected his spelling error in a follow up tweet which, correctly, accuses China of engaging in an "unprecedented act" by seizing the US naval drone.
China steals United States Navy research drone in international waters - rips it out of water and takes it to China in unprecedented act.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 17, 2016
On Sunday morning, Trump reignited the diplomatic spat with China when during an interview with Chris Wallace on Fox News Sunday the President-elect said that his support for the "One China" policy which has underpinned U.S. behavior toward Taiwan since the 1970s, will hinge on cutting a better deal on trade, in other words it will be a "barter chip" to extract future concessions from Beijing.
In a Sunday interview with Chris Wallace, President elect Donald Trump did the unthinkable: he refused to cow tow to the One China policy, drawing a hard line in the sand with China that resulted in harsh rebuttals from both Chinese government officials and state run media.