China Navy. File photoBEIJING, May 9China's armed forces conducted sea and air exercises east and southwest of the island of Taiwan, the Chinese People's Liberation Army (PLA) Eastern Combat Command (PLA) said in a statement. The exercise took place from May 6 to 8 in «the sea area and airspace east and southwest of the island of Taiwan,» according to a message published on Monday on the official account of the Eastern Combat Command Zone on the WeChat social network. The purpose of the exercise was to increase combat capability various branches of the military in joint operations. Official relations between the central government of the PRC and its island province were interrupted in 1949, after the Kuomintang forces led by Chiang Kai-shek, defeated in a civil war with the Communist Party of China, moved to Taiwan. Business and informal contacts between the island and mainland China resumed in the late 1980s. Since the early 1990s, the parties began to contact through non-governmental organizations — the Beijing Association for the Development of Relations across the Taiwan Strait and the Taipei Cross-Strait Exchange Foundation. The Pentagon sees no sign that China intends to attack Taiwan
