CHINA LAUNCHES HUGE MILITARY DRILLS AROUND TAIWAN
- China claims Taiwan is part of its territory and refused to renounce use of force
Taiwan was forced to scramble fighter jets and put missile, naval and land units on alert this morning after China launched huge military exercises around the self-governing island.
Beijing said the menacing war games, dubbed 'Joint Sword-2024A', were a 'strong punishment' for Taiwan following the inauguration of its new president, Lai Ching-te, who is detested in Beijing as a 'separatist'.
China claims Taiwan is part of its national territory and the People's Liberation Army routinely sends navy ships and warplanes into the Taiwan Strait and other areas around the island to wear down Taiwan's defences and seek to intimidate its people.
But this week's wargames are massive in scale.
The PLA released a map of the intended exercise area which completely surrounds Taiwan's main island concentrating major firepower at five key points, as well as places like Matsu and Kinmen, outlying islands that are closer to the Chinese mainland than Taiwan.
China's coast guard also said it organised a fleet to carry out law enforcement drills near two islands close to the Taiwanese-controlled island groups of Kinmen and Matsu just off the Chinese coast.
They come after the island swore in President Lai who said in his inaugural speech on Monday that Taiwan 'must demonstrate our resolution to defend our nation'.
China denounced Lai's speech as a 'confession of independence'.
A flight of Mirage 2000 jet fighters were seen taking off from an airbase in northern Taiwan in anticipation of the oncoming wargames this morning as the defence minister issued a scathing statement in response to China's aggression.
China's 'irrational provocation has jeopardised regional peace and stability,' the ministry said.
It added that Taipei will seek no conflicts but 'will not shy away from one'.
'This pretext for conducting military exercises not only does not contribute to peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait, but also shows its hegemonic nature at heart,' the ministry's statement said.
The PLA's Eastern Theatre Command said the land, navy and air exercises around Taiwan are meant to test the navy and air capabilities of the PLA units, as well as their joint strike abilities to hit targets and win control of the battlefield, the command said on its official Weibo account.
'This is also a powerful punishment for the separatist forces seeking ''independence'' and a serious warning to external forces for interference and provocation,' the statement said.
The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) sees Taiwan as a renegade province to be brought back under Beijing's control - something the authoritarian president Xi Jinping has said he's willing to do by force.
But Taiwan's elected Democratic Progressive Party steadfastly argues it presides over a self-governing, democratic, capitalist society with overwhelming support from its people.
Self-ruled Taiwan is separated by a narrow 110-mile strait from China, and Taipei's coast guard said it had encountered Chinese ships around the Taiwan-administered outlying islands of Dongyin and Wuqiu early Thursday morning.
Two Chinese coast guard ships had sailed into the 'restricted waters of Dongyin' at 7:48am, while another was outside the restricted zone to 'provide support', Taipei's coast guard said.
Another two Chinese ships were detected around Wuqiu, about 70 miles from Taiwan's western coast, 'entering restricted waters', with a third outside the restricted area, the coast guard said.
Footage released by the coast guard showed Taiwanese officers ordering Chinese ships to leave over a loudspeaker.
'Your movements affect our country's order and safety, please turn away and leave our restricted waters as soon as possible,' an officer said, according to the coast guard video.
'Leave right away, leave right away!'
The incidents near Dongyin and Wuqiu marked the seventh time this month that Chinese vessels breached Taiwan's restricted waters.
In his inauguration address on Monday, new president Lai called for Beijing to stop its military intimidation and pledged to 'neither yield nor provoke' the mainland Communist Party leadership.
Lai has said he seeks dialogue with Beijing while maintaining Taiwan's current status and avoiding conflicts that could draw in the island's chief ally the U.S. and other regional partners such as Japan and Australia.
While China has termed the exercises as punishment for Taiwan's election result, the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) has now run the island's government for more than a decade.
Speaking in Australia, Marine Corps Lt. Gen. Stephen Sklenka, the deputy commander of the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, called on Asia-Pacific nations to condemn the Chinese military exercises.
'There's no surprise whenever there's an action that highlights Taiwan in the international sphere the Chinese feel compelled to make some kind of form of statement,' Sklenka told the National Press Club of Australia in the capital Canberra, in a reference to Monday's presidential inauguration.
'Just because we expect that behaviour doesn't mean that we shouldn't condemn it, and we need to condemn it publicly. And it needs to come from us, but it also needs to come, I believe, from nations in the region.
'It's one thing when the United States condemns the Chinese, but it has a far more powerful effect, I believe, when it comes from nations within this region,' Sklenka added.
Japan's top envoy weighed in while visiting the U.S., saying Japan and Taiwan share values and principles, including freedom, democracy, basic rights and rule of law.
'(Taiwan) is our extremely important partner that we have close economic relations and exchanges of people, and is our precious friend,' Foreign Minister Yoko Kamikawa told reporters in Washington, where she held talks with Secretary of State Antony Blinken.
She said the two ministers discussed Taiwan and the importance of the Taiwan Strait, one of the world's most important waterways for shipping, remaining peaceful.
Beijing's incessant war games in the Taiwan Strait and Xi's declaration that 'China will never renounce the right to use force' to bring the island under the control of the mainland suggest the CCP may be laying the groundwork for an invasion.
Speaking last year, China's leader said the People's Liberation Army, which is now the second largest force in the world, must conduct 'military struggles firmly and with flexibility'.
'You must strengthen real combat military training,' he said in a statement carried by state news agency Xinhua, adding that the military must 'resolutely defend China's territorial sovereignty and maritime interests, and strive to protect overall peripheral stability'.
Taiwanese and US defence officials have since warned they expect the PLA to be ready to launch an attack on the island well before the end of the decade.
CIA Director William Burns in February 2023 claimed US intelligence suggests Xi has instructed his country's military to 'be ready by 2027' to invade Taiwan.
'We do know, as has been made public, that President Xi has instructed the PLA, the Chinese military leadership, to be ready by 2027 to invade Taiwan, but that doesn't mean that he's decided to invade in 2027 or any other year as well,' Burns told CBS' 'Face the Nation.'
But for all of Xi's posturing and declarations that Beijing will not renounce the right to use force to 'reunite' the island with the mainland, China has shown in recent decades it is very reluctant to fight a war.
Beijing last engaged in a large-scale military operation in Vietnam in 1979 which failed just as the US effort had four years prior - and the CCP has plenty to lose in a war with Taiwan.
The conflict would be widely condemned by its Western trading partners, and Xi has the hindsight of watching the damaging economic response levied by Western powers on Russia following Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine.
And launching an invasion would run the risk of triggering a military response from the only world power whose armed forces have the might to overcome the sheer size of the People's Liberation Army - the United States.
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