# 🇨🇳China – 🇹🇼Taiwan

• China’s military on Thursday began unprecedented live firing drills in six regions surrounding Taiwan.
• Drills have put in place an effective blockade that disrupted flights and shipping.
• The drills, which will continue until Sunday, were part of Beijing’s response to Wednesday’s visit by US House speaker Nancy Pelosi to Taiwan.
• Chinese state media reports said the conventional missile launches had practiced hitting foreign aircraft carriers to test China’s area denial capacities in the event of external intervention in a future conflict.

# ‘One China policy’

• New Delhi has chosen a ‘studied silence’ on the unfolding situation between China and Taiwan.
• Experts say the silence is deliberate to avoid any controversy when border talks are ongoing between India and China.
• India unlike other countries in the region, has not referenced the ‘one China policy’ since atleast 2010.
• Every other country in the region including Pakistan, Bangladesh and Srilanka have reaffirmed their commitment to one China policy.

# Iran

• Negotiators kicked off a fresh round of talks over Iran’s nuclear program in Vienna on Thursday.
• Officials from world powers and Iran were meeting in the Austrian capital for the first time since march, when negotiations which began in 2021 to reintegrate the United States into the agreement stalled.
• Britain, China, France, Germany, Iran, Russia and the US signed the JCOPA in 2015, which later failed.

# Inflation

• High inflation is driving about 8% of the current surge in Goods and services tax revenues.
• SBI research also raised its current account deficit target for this year to 3.7% of GDP.