The U.S. government has quietly unfrozen about $870 million in security assistance programs for Taiwan, according to two officials familiar with the matter, who were not authorized to speak publicly.
It is a significant move amid dramatic cuts to foreign assistance by the Trump administration, reductions which have faced a flurry of legal challenges. On Wednesday evening, just hours before a midnight deadline, the Supreme Court's chief justice paused a federal judge's order to disperse some $2 billion in frozen foreign aid.
China criticized the resumed funding decision for violating its security interests in Taiwan, a democratic, self-governing island which China claims as its territory and has repeatedly threatened to invade if necessary. On Thursday, China's Defense Ministry spokesperson Wu Qian said, "We will come get you sooner or later," in reference to Taiwan.
A spokesperson for China's Foreign Ministry, Lin Jian, said earlier this week the U.S. funding decision "sends a gravely wrong signal to 'Taiwan independence' separatist forces."
On Wednesday, China also kicked off live-fire military drills off the shores of Taiwan's main island.
"During this period, [China] even blatantly violated international practice by setting up a drills area in waters about 40 nautical miles off the coast ... without prior warning," Taiwan's Defense Ministry said.
Taiwan's Defense Ministry said it had found and monitored 45 aircraft, 14 navy vessels and one ship from the Chinese military operating around Taiwan in a 24-hour period ending Thursday.
This month, China also held live-fire drills with a group of three naval ships in international waters off the coasts of New Zealand and Australia, leading Australian authorities to issue a warning to commercial flights between the two countries over the presence of the Chinese warships.
The Chinese drills near Taiwan began a day after Taiwan's coast guard said it detained eight Chinese sailors on a ship carrying the flag of the West African nation of Togo. The ship dropped anchor shortly before Taiwan's state telecom company discovered a nearby undersea cable had been severed.
The cable, connecting Taiwan's main island to a Taiwanese outlying island that is also close to China, is the third Taiwanese undersea cable in two years to be severed under suspicious circumstances. Taiwan said in at least one instance, a Chinese ship may have dragged its anchor over the cable.
Last November, two undersea fiber optic cables in the Baltic Sea were severed and officials in Sweden and other countries are investigating a Chinese-flagged ship in possible connection to the incident.
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