China extends military exercises around Taiwan
Beijing’s naval moves are largest ever in the area
China said Monday that it would hold new drills near Taiwan, a sign that Beijing may keep up a drumbeat of military pressure on the island after conducting its largest-ever exercises in the area in retaliation for US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit last week.
The People’s Liberation Army’s Eastern Theater Command said it was focused on holding “joint anti-submarine and sea assault operations” Monday in an unspecified location. Taiwan’s Defense Ministry said it had detected nearly 13 Chinese warships and nearly 40 sorties near the island Monday, including 21 that crossed the informal median line in the Taiwan Strait that divides the island from the mainland.
The latest drills indicated that Beijing might be seeking to normalize its military’s presence around Taiwan, allowing Chinese forces to practice imposing a slow squeeze on the island that involves cutting off much of the access to its airspace and waters. China’s announcement came a day after its military wrapped up 72 hours of exercises encircling Taiwan, effectively simulating a blockade. During those drills, China sent at least 11 missiles into seas north, south, and east of Taiwan, and it deployed warships and fighter jets to swarm the island.
Taiwan, an island of 23 million people 80 miles off the coast of China, has long been a source of tension between Washington and Beijing. China claims Taiwan, a democratically governed island, as its territory and has vowed to take it, using force if necessary.
Pelosi was the highest-profile US official to go to Taiwan since 1997, when Newt Gingrich, then the House speaker, made a contentious visit. After she landed in Taipei last Tuesday night, a chorus of Chinese government bodies denounced her visit, claiming that it thwarted China’s efforts at unification with Taiwan and imperiled regional stability.
China has cast the drills as a show of force intended to punish the island for a visit by Pelosi that challenged Beijing’s claims to Taiwan. The drills, which pushed ever closer to Taiwan and lasted 72 hours, gave Chinese forces valuable practice should they one day be ordered to attack the island.
On the first day of the drills last week, five Chinese ballistic missiles fell into Japan’s exclusive economic zone east of Taiwan, the first time any had landed in those waters. Analysts saw that as Beijing sending a warning to both the United States and Japan about coming to the aid of Taiwan in the event of a conflict there, reminding Washington that China can strike US bases in the region.
China selected six areas to hold exercises for their importance in a potential campaign to seal off Taiwan, said Major General Meng Xiangqing, a professor of strategy at the National Defense University in Beijing, in an interview on Chinese television. One zone covers the narrowest part of the Taiwan Strait. Others could be used to block a major port or attack three of Taiwan’s main military bases. Another, facing southern Taiwan, could block an escape route.