The environment became the latest victim of the geopolitical jousting a day earlier, as Beijing said it would withdraw from a series of talks and cooperation agreements with Washington -- most notably on climate change and defence cooperation.

China should not hold talks on issues of global concern such as climate change "hostage", Blinken said, as it "doesn’t punish the United States, it punishes the world".

 

In a bid to show how close China’s forces have been getting to Taiwan’s shores, Beijing’s military overnight released a video of an air force pilot filming the island’s coastline and mountains from his cockpit.

And the Eastern Command of the Chinese army shared a photo it said was taken of a warship patrolling in seas near Taiwan, the island’s shoreline clearly visible in the background.

The drills have also seen Beijing fire ballistic missiles over Taiwan’s capital, according to Chinese state media.

 

Beijing said it would also hold a live-fire drill in a southern part of the Yellow Sea -- located between China and the Korean peninsula -- from Saturday until August 15.

Taiwan has remained defiant, insisting it will not be cowed by what Taipei’s government earlier called its "evil neighbour".

 

Taiwan’s foreign ministry told Beijing on Saturday to "immediately stop raising tensions and taking provocative actions to intimidate the Taiwanese people".

The Mainland Affairs Council, Taipei’s highest policymaking body on China, also condemned the drills after Saturday’s apparent simulation.

 

The scale and intensity of China’s drills have triggered outrage in the United States and other democracies.

 

Blinken and the foreign ministers of Japan and Australia issued a joint statement calling on China to halt the exercises after meeting on the sidelines of an Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) summit in Cambodia.

 

But Beijing’s decision to withdraw from hard-won cooperation on climate change has now sparked wider fears about the future of the planet.

 

US National Security Council spokesman John Kirby told reporters in Washington the decision was "fundamentally irresponsible".

 

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned the two superpowers must continue to work together -- for the world’s sake.

 

"For the secretary-general, there is no way to solve the most pressing problems of all the world without an effective dialogue and cooperation between the two countries," his spokesman Stephane Dujarric said.

 

With tensions over Taiwan having risen to their highest level in nearly 30 years, with an elevated risk of military conflict, experts told AFP the latest downturn in relations between the two countries could be long-lasting.

 

The suspension Friday of bilateral military and maritime dialogue while China continues its military exercises was "particularly worrisome", said Bonnie Glaser, a China expert at the German Marshall Fund.

 

"We don’t know what else they will do," she said. "We just don’t know if this is just a temporary thing."

 

John Culver, a former CIA Asia analyst, said in a discussion hosted by the Center for Strategic and International Studies that Beijing’s main purpose with its military exercises was to establish a "new normal".

 

"The Chinese want to show... that a line has been crossed by the speaker’s visit," Culver said.