China Taiwan News LIVE Updates: Will not provoke but will not shirk, says Taiwan amid China's 'missile strike'

Southeast Asian foreign ministers urged restraint Thursday as China launched massive military drills off Taiwan, warning the situation risked spiralling into "open conflicts". A furious Beijing kicked off its biggest-ever exercises around Taiwan in response to US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's visit this week to the self-ruled island. Ministers from the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) meeting in Phnom Penh warned against "provocative action".

Within minutes of US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s arrival in Taiwan late Tuesday, China announced a series of drills and missile launches encircling Taiwan from August 4-7. This was swiftly followed by economic sanctions on Taiwanese agricultural goods and imports of Chinese sand.

China should not overreact to the visit to Taiwan by US House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said on Thursday. "The visit of Nancy Pelosi is no reason for China to overreact or threaten Taiwan or to use threatening rhetoric," Stoltenberg told Reuters.

Ballistic missiles fired by China are believed to have landed in Japan's exclusive economic zone for the first time, Tokyo's defence minister said Thursday. "Five of the nine ballistic missiles launched by China are believed to have landed within Japan's EEZ," Nobuo Kishi told reporters, as China holds massive military drills in the waters around Taiwan.

Southeast Asian foreign ministers urged restraint Thursday as China launched massive military drills off Taiwan, warning the situation risked spiralling into "open conflicts". A furious Beijing kicked off its biggest-ever exercises around Taiwan in response to US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's visit this week to the self-ruled island. Ministers from the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) meeting in Phnom Penh warned against "provocative action".

New Zealand Foreign Affairs Minister Nanaia Mahuta met her Chinese counterpart Wang Yi on the sidelines of the ASEAN summit and said that de-escalation is needed in the Taiwan Strait, as China started its military drills in the region. According to the statement released by the New Zealand government, "the Minister restated Aotearoa New Zealand's interest in peace and stability in the region, including across the Taiwan Strait, and emphasised the importance of de-escalation, diplomacy and dialogue.

As US House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi made a brief visit to Taiwan this week that enraged Beijing, the welcome she received from government officials and the public was in sharp contrast with a different sort of message that began popping up elsewhere on the island. On Wednesday, in some branches of 7-11 convenience stores in Taiwan, the television screens behind cashiers suddenly switched to display the words: "Warmonger Pelosi, get out of Taiwan!" The largest 24-hour convenience store chain on the island was the victim of what Taiwanese authorities are calling an unprecedented amount of cyber attacks on government websites belonging to the presidential office, foreign and defence ministries as well as infrastructure such as screens at railway stations, in protest against Pelosi's visit.

As China embarks on its largest-ever military exercises around Taiwan following US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's visit to Taipei, AFP looks back at relations between the self-governing island and Beijing, which views it as part of China. Mao Zedong's communists take power in Beijing in October 1949 after defeating Chiang Kai-shek's Kuomintang (KMT) nationalists in a civil war.