“They have been doing it for 20 or 25 years”

MADRID, December 30 (EUROPA PRESS) –

The President of the United States, Donald Trump, said Monday that he had “no concerns” about the military maneuvers initiated this week by China in the vicinity of Taiwan, affirming that “they have been carrying out these types of exercises for 20 or 25 years”, some, he defended, of larger scale.

“No, it doesn’t worry me, nothing,” he replied to a journalist who asked him about this question during a joint press conference with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, after the meeting between the two leaders.

Trump said his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, had not informed him of these operations and, in fact, indicated that he did not think he would communicate anything to him about them, although they maintain what the Republican tycoon considers “a great relationship.”

Likewise, he downplayed the importance of these maneuvers, saying that the Chinese army “has been conducting naval exercises in this area for 20 years”, “it has been doing it for 20 or 25 years”. “Now people interpret it a little differently,” he noted, arguing instead that the Chinese armed forces have already conducted exercises “bigger than what they are doing now.”

The American president thus minimized the military operations undertaken by Beijing in the vicinity of Taiwan, calling them “a severe warning against separatist forces which promote ‘Taiwan independence'”. The island authorities, for their part, condemned what they call “military intimidation” and urged China to put an end to “its irresponsible provocations”.