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Hu Xijin, who works for the Chinese government to spread propaganda, said on Saturday that he deleted a tweet that threatened military action if US military jets followed House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to Taiwan.
But he didn't delete the tweet until Twitter shut down his account.
Pelosi is third in line to be president after President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris. On Saturday morning, she left for a trip to Asia, where she will make official stops in Singapore, Malaysia, South Korea, and Japan.
Many people think she will also stop in Taiwan. Communist China says that Taiwan is a breakaway province, not an independent country, and that it has no right to deal with other countries. In 1949, after a civil war in which the Community Party took control of mainland China, the two broke up.
Reports say that Pelosi will go to the island, but she has refused to say for sure. If the visit happens, she would be the highest-ranking elected official from the United States to go to Taiwan since 1997.
Hu Xijin kept tweeting about the trip even after he deleted the tweet about shooting Pelosi down.
“If Pelosi really visits Taiwan as planned, the Tsai Ing-wen [Taiwanese] authorities are accomplice,” he posted Saturday.
“The mainland will definitely carry out severe punishment actions on Taiwan at the same time. The unbearable consequences will fall on Tsai authorities.”
While the speaker was flying east on Saturday, the Chinese military held live-fire drills off its coast opposite Taiwan.
The official Xinhua News Agency said that the People's Liberation Army did the drills near the Pingtan islands off the coast of Fujian province.
The one-sentence announcement didn't say anything about whether missiles, fighter planes, or other weapons would be used in the drills.
In a phone call with President Joe Biden on Thursday, President Xi Jinping warned against "interference from the outside" in how Beijing deals with the island.
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