China on alert amid reports that US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi heads to Taiwan

Beijing: China is on alert as US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi departed Malaysia on Tuesday and may head to Taiwan ignoring its warnings of a resolute response if she visited the self-ruled island, which Beijing claims as its own territory.

Travelling by US Air Force jet, Pelosi on a tour of Asia, left Malaysia and was expected to land at the Taiwanese capital Taipei around 2220 hrs local time, according to Taiwanese media reports.

It is not clear if Pelosi or her delegation were on the plane. It is widely expected that Pelosi will visit Taiwan and meet President Tsai Ing-wen on Wednesday, defying Beijing’s repeated warnings, Hong Kong-based-South China Morning Post reported on Tuesday.

In quandary over stopping her visit, China continued to issue stern warnings to deter the 82-year-old top Democratic Party leader from going to Taipei, while official media here reported that tension escalated hours ahead of Pelosi's potential Taiwan visit as the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) remains fully prepared for any crisis.

While issuing a stern warning, China is yet to divulge its plans to retaliate against her visit.

Beijing routinely protests any foreign dignitaries' visits to Taiwan, which claims its own and firmly insists all countries follow the One China policy acknowledging that the breakaway province is part of its mainland.

In Beijing, the Chinese foreign ministry said the US would “pay the price” if Pelosi went to Taiwan.

“The US side will bear the responsibility and pay the price for undermining China’s sovereign security interests,” Assistant Foreign Minister and foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying told a media briefing here on Tuesday and reiterated that Beijing would take “strong measures” in response to Pelosi’s visit, which will be the highest by top US official in 25 years.

"Faced with reckless US disregard of China's repeated and serious representations, any countermeasures taken by the Chinese side will be justified and necessary, which is also the right of any independent and sovereign country," Hua said, responding to questions on what possible actions China would take to deter her from going to Taipei.

Both China and Taiwan on Tuesday stepped up military deployments across the Taiwan Strait, the Post report said.

State-run Global Times reported that China has moved two of its aircraft carriers out from their home ports respectively ahead of Pelosi's visit. Besides the two, China recently launched a third aircraft carrier.

The aircraft carrier Liaoning on Sunday embarked on a voyage from its homeport in Qingdao, East China's Shandong Province, and the aircraft carrier Shandong on Monday set out from its homeport in Sanya, South China's Hainan Province, accompanied by a Type 075 amphibious assault ship, the report said.

The intensity of the situation across the Taiwan Straits separating the Chinese mainland and Taiwan has drastically escalated as the military deployment from the Chinese mainland, the report said.

The Chinese military also stepped up live-fire exercises in the region.

The Fujian Provincial Military Command neighbouring Taiwan posted videos and pictures on Tuesday about a live-fire exercise, which aims to "test overall combat capability under complex conditions." It said that the minuteman missile unit, anti-aircraft artillery unit, radar unit and other combat units participated in the exercise, the first time in recent years that a provincial military command has organised a multi-branch and multi-professional militia to conduct live fire, the Global Time report said.

CNN quoted a US official as saying that American Defence Department officials are working around the clock on monitoring any Chinese movements in the region and securing a plan to keep her safe.

The USS Ronald Reagan reportedly escorting Pelosi is also approaching Taiwan island.

A Beijing-based think tank, the South China Sea Strategic Situation Probing Initiative, said that the USS Reagan carrier strike group is already in nearby waters east of the Bashi Channel, the water between Philippine and Taiwan island.

Beijing sees official American contact with Taiwan as an encouragement to make the island's decades-old de facto independence permanent, a step US leaders say they don't support. Pelosi, head of one of three branches of the US government, would be the highest-ranking elected American official to visit Taiwan since then-Speaker Newt Gingrich in 1997.