On Tuesday, China said that it would put sanctions on LMT (Lockheed Martin) for its participation in arms sales to Taiwan, the action that can further ramp up tensions between Washington and China.
During a press conference, the spokesperson of Foreign Ministry, Zhao Lijian, said that china strongly opposes the United States arms trade to Taiwan. Moreover, Taiwan is a self-governed region, but China has previously sworn to unify it with its mainland.
China said on Tuesday it would place sanctions on Lockheed Martin for its involvement in arms sales to Taiwan, a move that could further escalate tensions between Beijing and Washington. https://t.co/1GyWazWnJ1
— CNN International (@cnni) July 14, 2020
The U.S. is one of the leading arms suppliers for Taiwan. Last week, the United States Department agreed on an appeal by Taiwan to update its Patriot Surface to Air missiles at a projected price of 620 million dollars, described by the state-run Central News Agency of Taiwan.
Beijing imposes sanctions on arm trades
Without any briefing, Zhao LIjian, said that in reaction, China is going to impose sanctions on the primary contractor of this arms trade, LMT. He added that the U.S. should halt trading arms to Taiwan and remove its military ties to Taiwan, thus, it will not make any further destruction to bilateral relations between the United States and China.
The connections between the world’s leading two economies (China and the U.S.) were already touching new tensions. After implementing sanctions on Huawei, United States has threatened in previous weeks to restrict more Chinese leading tech giants in the U.S. On the other hand, China has sanctioned United States lawmakers and officials and said that the U.S. to stop interfering in Beijing’s international affairs. At the same time, there is emerging criticism from the U.S. and many other Western nations over China’s crackdown on Hong Kong and its initial handling of the pandemic Coronavirus.
Last week, Global Times, China’s state-run media, reported that arms trading with Taiwan, depicts the United States is updating its strategies to attain the mainland irrespective of the problems it has dealing with the COVID-19 at home, and it will head to more complexity and chaos to the area instead of stability and peace.
Beijing can ban Chinese firms from delivering key technology to LMT (Lockheed Martin), which is similar to the bans Washington has put on Huawei. In the previous year, Sky News, a media outlet, stated that a Chinese owned firm manufactures circuit boards for jet F-35.
Lockheed martin described the British broadcaster that it wasn’t aware of any Chinese owned suppliers of F-35.
