Taiwan details China drills, VP says election not China's to call

livemint.com:

Taiwan's Vice President William Lai said election next year is a choice between democracy and autocracy, the Vice President added after China carried out military drills around the island in anger at his visit this month to the United States. Vice President William Lai, the front-runner in polls to be Taiwan's next president at elections in January, made brief stopovers in the US, prompting fury in Beijing, which views him as a dangerous separatist given China's territorial claims over the island. The Defence ministry of Taiwan's said Sunday morning that in the past 24 hours 25 Chinese air force planes had crossed the Taiwan Strait's median line, which had served as an unofficial barrier between the two sides until Chinese military aircraft began regularly crossing it a year ago.

Taiwanese officials had said China was likely to conduct military exercises near the island, using Lai's U.S. stopovers as a pretext to intimidate voters ahead of next year's presidential election and make them "fear war". In an interview broadcast late Saturday with a Taiwanese television station but conducted while he was in New York last weekend, Lai said it was not up toChina to decide who wins the election.

It's not who China likes today, and then they can assume the post. This goes against the spirit of Taiwan's democracy, and represents huge damage to Taiwan's democratic system," he said. China should not "make a fuss over nothing" when it comes to foreign travel by Taiwanese leaders, Lai said.