Taiwan says drills show wider goal

Official says China has ‘geostrategic ambition’ in region

Taiwan warned yesterday that Chinese military drills aren’t just a rehearsal for an invasion of the selfgoverning island but also reflect ambitions to control large swaths of the western Pacific, as Taipei conducted its own exercises to underscore it’s ready to defend itself.

Angered by United States House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s recent visit to Taiwan, China has sent military ships and planes across the midline that separates the two sides in the Taiwan Strait and launched missiles into waters surrounding the island. The drills, which began last week, have disrupted flights and shipping in one of the busiest zones for global trade.

Ignoring calls to calm tensions, Beijing instead extended the exercises without announcing when they will end.

Taiwanese Foreign Minister Joseph Wu said that beyond aiming to annex the island democracy, which split with the mainland amid civil war in 1949, China wants to establish its dominance in the western Pacific. That would include controlling the East and South China Seas via the Taiwan Strait and imposing a blockade to prevent the US and its allies from aiding Taiwan in the event of an attack, he told a news conference in Taipei. The exercises show China’s “geostrategic ambition beyond Taiwan”, which Beijing claims as its own territory, Wu said. “China has no right to interfere in or alter” Taiwan’s democracy or its interactions with other nations.

Wu’s assessment of China’s manoeuvres was grimmer than that of other observers but echoed widespread concerns that Beijing is seeking to expand its influence in the Pacific, where the US has military bases and extensive treaty partnerships.

China has said its drills were prompted by Pelosi’s visit, but Wu said Beijing was using her trip as a pretext for intimidating moves long in the works. China also banned some

Taiwanese food imports after the visit and cut off dialogue with the US on a range of issues from military contacts to combating transnational crime and climate change.

Pelosi also dismissed China’s outrage as a public stunt, noting on NBC that “nobody said a word” about a Senate delegation a few visit months ago. Later on the MSNBC news network, she said Chinese President Xi Jinping was acting like a “scared bully”, adding “I don’t think the President of China should control the schedules of members of Congress”.

Through its manoeuvres, China has pushed closer to Taiwan’s borders and may be seeking to establish a new normal in which it could eventually control access to the island’s ports and airspace. That would likely elicit a strong response from the military on the island, whose people strongly favour the status quo of de-facto independence.

Washington is legally bound to ensure the island can defend itself. That leaves open the question of whether the US would dispatch forces if China attacked Taiwan.

An extended crisis in the Taiwan Strait, a significant thoroughfare for global trade, could have major implications for international supply chains at a time when the world is already facing disruptions and uncertainty in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic and the war in Ukraine. Taiwan is a crucial provider of computer chips for the global economy, including China’s high-tech sectors.

— AP