China fires missiles over Taiwan for first time as Beijing retaliates against Pelosi visit

Pelosi met with Japan’s Prime Minister Fumio Kishida Friday morning, with their attention focused on the Taiwan Strait, where China is staging air and sea drills to protest against the US speaker’s visit to Taiwan earlier this week.

China has previously fired missiles into waters surrounding Taiwan — a democratic island of 24 million that the Chinese Communist Party regards as its territory, despite having never controlled it — most notably during the Taiwan Strait Crisis in the 1990s.

But missiles flying over the island marked a significant escalation, with US officials warning there may be more to come.

“We anticipated that China might take steps like this — in fact, I described them for you in quite some detail just the other day,” said John Kirby, a spokesperson for the US National Security Council, on Thursday.

“We also expect that these actions will continue and that the Chinese will continue to react in the coming days,” he told reporters at the White House.

China started military drills around the island on Thursday, firing multiple missiles toward waters near northeastern and southwestern Taiwan.

A Chinese military expert confirmed on state broadcaster CCTV that the conventional missiles flew over Taiwan’s main island, including airspace covered by Taiwanese defense missiles.

“We hit the targets under the observation of US Aegis combat system, which means the Chinese military has solved the difficulties of hitting long-range targets on waters,” said Maj. Gen. Meng Xiangqing, a professor of strategy at the National Defense University in Beijing.

In a statement late Thursday, Taiwan’s Defense Ministry said the missiles had traveled above the atmosphere and therefore posed no risk to the island.

Authorities did not trigger air raid alerts because they predicted the missiles would land in waters east of Taiwan, the ministry said. The ministry added it would not release further information about the missiles’ trajectory to protect its intelligence-gathering capabilities.

China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) conducts missile tests into the waters off the eastern coast of Taiwan, from an undisclosed location on August 4, 2022.

Five ballistic missiles are believed to have landed within Japan’s Exclusive Economic Zone, including the four believed to have flown over Taiwan, said Japan’s Defense Ministry on Thursday.

“This is a serious problem that concerns Japan’s security and the safety of its citizens. We strongly condemn it,” Japan’s Defense Minister Nobuo Kishi told reporters during a news conference.

CNN’s Gawon Bae and Yong Xiong in Seoul, Emiko Jozuka in Tokyo, Eric Cheung in Taipei, and Sam Fossum in Washington contributed to this report.