End of secretary of state Antony Blinken’s three-day visit marks upsurge in military activity after period of relative calm

Taiwan has reported that a dozen Chinese warplanes flew sorties close to the island on Saturday, in a sudden surge of military activity just hours after the US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, left Beijing following talks with President Xi Jinping and top Chinese officials.

Before Blinken’s three-day visit to China , US officials had pointed to a period of relative calm in the Taiwan strait over the past few months, after years of aggressive Chinese military manoeuvres and threats, as a factor in improving US-Chinese relations since Joe Biden held a summit meeting with Xi in November.

The sweeping foreign aid package passed by congress has drawn the ire of China, but billions of dollars will actually stay in the US

Taiwan’s president Tsai Ing-wen has praised the US Congress for passing a sweeping foreign aid package this week which included arms support for the island, and has drawn the ire of China.

After months of delays and contentious debate, the bill was signed into law by Joe Biden on Wednesday . Described as $95bn in aid for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan, the legislation actually contains provisions that broadly affect many parts of the Asia-Pacific, while also spending billions of dollars at home in America.

Chinese leader used meeting with Ma Ying-jeou to promote peaceful ‘reunion’ as only alternative to annexation, say analysts

Xi Jinping has met the former Taiwan president Ma Ying-jeou, in what analysts said was an attempt to promote peaceful unification as the only alternative to military annexation of Taiwan.

Ma, who was leading a student delegation to China, met Xi in Beijing at the Great Hall of the People, a venue typically reserved for foreign leaders meeting with senior Chinese officials. Xi used the meeting to emphasise his belief that Taiwan and China were destined for what he terms “reunification”.

‘I kept praying and praying’, says rescued woman as search for four people missing from hiking trail set to resume following Wednesday’s quake

Rescuers in Taiwan planned to bring in heavy equipment on Saturday to try to recover two bodies buried on a hiking trail, while more than 600 people remained stranded in various locations, three days after the island’s strongest earthquake in 25 years.

Four people remain missing on the same Shakadang Trail in Taroko national park, famed for its rugged mountainous terrain. Search and recovery work was set to resume after being called off on Friday afternoon because of aftershocks.

At least 12 people were killed by the magnitude 7.4 earthquake that struck on Wednesday morning off Taiwan’s east coast, and 10 others were still missing.

More than 600 people – including about 450 at a hotel in the Taroko park – remained stranded, cut off by rockslides and other damage in different areas. However, many were known to be safe as rescuers deployed helicopters, drones and smaller teams with dogs to reach them.

Residents of tourist town at the epicentre of the 7.2 magnitude Taiwan earthquake face destruction and despair

Lying in his bed, Liao Xiu Bo wondered if he was about to die. As a powerful earthquake rocked the ground beneath him, he tried to escape his house. “Am I going to be crushed?”, he asked himself, before gathering the courage to run down the stairs, which swayed beneath his feet.

Outside, he could see that the wall surrounding his house had collapsed, its bricks littered across the road. “That’s when I realised how extreme the earthquake was”.

CCTV footage shows staff rush to hold on to wobbling cots when an earthquake struck Taiwan. Surveillance video caught the moment the earthquake hit the Ma Cherie maternity centre in Taipei. Taiwan is still assessing the aftermath of the quake – given a magnitude of 7.2 by the national earthquake monitoring agency, 7.4 by the US and 7.7 by Japan – which struck near Hualien

• Taiwan earthquake: rescuers search for survivors amid landslides and aftershocks

Officials are trying to reach more than 100 people cut off by a quake that has killed at least nine and injured about 1,000 people

Rescue teams are trying to reach more than 100 people trapped in mining areas and a national park after the strongest earthquake in decades hit Taiwan, killing nine and injuring about 1,000 people.

Search efforts around the worst-hit city of Hualien on the east coast have been hampered by more than 50 aftershocks recorded since the quake struck on Wednesday morning, Taiwan’s Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. More are predicted over the next four days, with magnitudes of between 6.5 and 7.

Enlarge / TSMC's headquarters, seen here, are in Hsinchu, Taiwan. (credit: Sam Yeh via Getty Images )

Chipmaking operations at Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC) were briefly paused today following a 7.4-magnitude earthquake hit Taiwan, according to a company statement provided to Bloomberg and others .

TSMC says that workers were evacuated as part of its earthquake safety protocols and that they have already returned to work. Bloomberg reports that the company is still "examining impact" to its operations, but it "expects to resume production overnight."

The quake's epicenter was on Taiwain's east coast and has prompted tsunami warnings in Japan, China, and the Philippines, according to The New York Times . The quake was followed by a long series of over 200 aftershocks, including one 6.5-magnitude aftershock. It's the strongest earthquake to affect Taiwan since the 7.7-magnitude Jiji earthquake in 1999. As of this writing, the NYT reports that at least nine people have died and 1,011 have reported injuries.

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At least seven killed and 700 injured after 7.2-magnitude quake struck south-east of city on Wednesday morning

• Taiwan earthquake: live updates

In the first moments after the huge quake hit, Lanni Hsu grabbed her dog and her family, and fled. Running down five flights of stairs, she headed outdoors to seek safety from falling objects.

Hsu lives in Hualien, a busy tourist city on Taiwan’s east coast, where the 7.2 magnitude quake struck on Wednesday morning . The death toll stood at seven, with 700 injured and hundreds trapped under rubble.