Beijing unleashes missiles in show of fury over Pelosi visit
China began its military exercises targeting Taiwan by firing off ballistic missiles and threatening an escalation to outright war in an unprecedented demonstration of strength.
An aircraft carrier group and a nuclear submarine are leading the exercises, which are expected to take place all around the island until Monday, Chinese state media reported.
The Taiwanese authorities said at least 11 Dongfeng missiles flew over its coastal waters to mark the start of the exercises. late on Thursday. They were accompanied by fiery rhetoric and warnings to Taiwan’s Western allies not to interfere.
Japan said five of the missiles landed within its economic exclusion zone, 200 miles from its territorial waters.
‘‘China’s actions this time have a serious impact on the peace and stability of the region and the international community,’’ Yoshimasa Hayashi, the foreign minister, said. He demanded an immediate end to the exercises.
He and Wang Yi, his Chinese counterpart, were among the foreign ministers attending a meeting of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations in the Cambodian capital Phnom Penh which was entirely overshadowed by events in the Taiwan Strait. Beijing cancelled a meeting between the two men in response to a statement by the G7 group of nations, of which Japan is a member, ‘‘unjustly accusing’’ China over the exercises.
Antony Blinken, the US secretary of state, was also at the summit, but he and Wang are said to have avoided each other.
China accuses the US – and in particular a visit to Taipei by Nancy Pelosi, the US House Speaker – of provoking tensions in the sensitive three-way relationship.
Hua Chunying, spokeswoman for the Chinese foreign ministry, said: ‘‘In the face of this blatant provocation, we have to take legitimate and necessary countermeasures to safeguard [our] sovereignty and territorial integrity.’’
The military exercises are China’s biggest in decades, and the most direct threat to the island since a putative invasion was called off in 1950.
The People’s Liberation Army (PLA) has declared six areas encircling the island, later extended to seven, to be no-go zones during the exercise. Parts of the areas overlap with Taiwan’s territorial seas and airspace, extending 12 miles offshore; a deliberate attempt to show that the island is ‘‘part of China’’.
Major-General Meng Xiangqing, an analyst at China’s National Defence University, told state television: ‘‘This realcombat exercise . . . is conducive to reshaping the strategic structure in favour of unification with the island. The scope is wide, the distance to the island is near, the force is strong and the elements are comprehensive.’’
He called the exercises ‘‘unprecedented’’ and added that they could easily turn into ‘‘real war’’.
They began with the army of the PLA’s Eastern Theatre Command conducting ‘‘long-distance live-fire shooting drills’’ to carry out ‘‘precision strikes at specific areas in the east part of the Taiwan Strait’’, according to the PLA Daily, the official military newspaper. Videos showed Dongfeng missiles being fired from a wooded area in Fujian province, directly across the Taiwan Strait on the mainland.
Japan, which has monitored the exercises closely, said at least four of the missiles flew over Taiwan.
At least 22 Chinese warplanes crossed the median line of the Taiwan Strait and entered the island’s air defence identification zone, and warships were spotted to the east of Taiwan. A drone flew over the Kinmen islands, a small outpost of Taiwanese territory barely five miles off the Chinese mainland, prompting the local defence forces to fire warning flares in response. The Taiwanese air force responded by scrambling Mirage 2000 and F-5 fighter jets. The foreign ministry accused China of ‘‘following the example of North Korea’’ with its provocative missile tests.
The island’s principal Taoyuan international airport cancelled 40 flights. Others were shown by flight-tracking websites to be adjusting course to avoid the areas designated for the exercises.
The US has not yet sought to interpose itself directly, as it did in a similar flare-up of tensions in 1995, when President Bill Clinton ordered warships into the Strait in a show of strength. However, the USS Ronald Reagan aircraft carrier strike group and the USS Tripoli, an amphibious assault ship, are both believed to be standing off in the Philippine Sea east of Taiwan, and a RC-135S surveillance plane has been deployed to the region.
Pelosi’s visit was said to have been planned independently of the Biden administration and against Pentagon advice. It came less than a week after President Xi Jinping warned President Joe Biden not to interfere with Taiwan.
Beijing lodged strong protests and vowed to take forceful countermeasures when Pelosi, 82, landed in Taipei on Tuesday night. Wang called the visit ‘‘manic, irresponsible and irrational’’. He reiterated China’s official position that Taiwan would eventually ‘‘return to the embrace of the motherland’’.
A joint European Union-G7 statement criticised China’s ‘‘aggressive military activity in the Taiwan Strait’’ – prompting a colourful response from the Chinese mission to the EU: ‘‘Why does the world have so many wars and so much chaos? That’s because there are these evils and this shamelessness,’’ it said of the EU-G7 statement.
Wang Jianmin, a Chinese analyst, told Ming Pao, a Hong Kong newspaper, that the drill was ‘‘an experiment and a rehearsal’’ for a full blockade of the island. ‘‘But the Chinese side has also shown restraint,’’ he added. ‘‘The core of this operation is to warn the US and Taiwan’s separatist forces. There is no military conflict . . . though there is no guarantee that there will be no war in the future.’’
Biden angered Beijing in May when he said during a visit to Japan that US forces would be prepared to defend Taiwan against Chinese attack; a claim quickly played down by White House officials. His administration insists that US policy is to prevent a Taiwanese declaration of independence, while selling it arms and ‘‘maintaining strategic ambiguity’’.