China’s President Xi Jinping has ordered the country’s military to enhance its war readiness and combat capabilities.

The military has to “comprehensively strengthen training and preparation for war, [and] ensure troops have solid combat capabilities,” the country’s media outlets quoted the head of state on Saturday as saying.

Chinese forces also have to “enhance their strategic deterrent,” he added while paying a visit to a brigade of the People’s Liberation Army’s Rocket Force.

According to the president, Chinese servicemen have to “strongly safeguard the country’s strategic security and core interests.”

The comments came amid an ongoing dispute between China and the West, led by the United States, over the former’s widely-recognized sovereignty over the self-ruled island of Chinese Taipei.

Beijing views the Taipei as one of mainland China’s provinces, an assertion that prohibits the island from establishing diplomatic relations with other states and joining most international bodies.

The US, however, has been courting the island’s secessionist administration and arming it with weapons against Beijing’s will.

Last month, the US State Department approved possible sale to Taipei’s military of spare parts valued at about $228 million, with the island’s defense ministry saying the sales package would “become effective” within a month.

American officials have also been paying visits to the island to Beijing’s alarm.

A US congressional delegation landed in Taipei last year, a year after the most high-profile American visit to the island, which featured a trip by former house speaker Nancy Pelosi.

Washington’s provocative attitude comes despite its having accepted the “One China” policy, which accords sovereign rights over the island to Beijing.

China has been responding to the American interference and adventurism by sanctioning the US military contractors that have approached Taipei at Washington’s behest and staging military drills around the island.

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