China begins military drills around Taiwan after US speaker meeting

China’s military said on Saturday it had begun three days of drills around Taiwan, less than 24 hours after the island’s president Tsai Ing-wen returned from a trip to the United States.

Tsai met the US House speaker, Kevin McCarthy, while in Los Angeles in Wednesday, angering Beijing, which claims Taiwan as a Chinese province it intends to annex.

On Saturday morning China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) said it would hold “combat…