China is carrying out ‘total blockade’ drills around Taiwan after Taipei last week vowed to resist any Beijing attack.
China deployed fighter jets and warships to encircle Taiwan on Monday, in drills Beijing said were aimed at sending a ‘stern warning’ to ‘separatist’ forces on the self-ruled island.
Beijing has not ruled out using force to bring Taiwan under its control and Monday’s drills represent its fourth round of large-scale war games in the past two years.
In May, after Taiwanese President Lai-Ching-te’s inauguration, large scale drills were announced – dubbed Joint Sword 2024A – which combined air and sea operations and missile forces, surrounding Taiwan from all sides while simulating a blockade.
On Monday morning, the long-expected Joint Sword 2024B was launched – which China is describing as again surrounding Taiwan with combined operations practising to fight in ‘all weather conditions’.
Taiwan is monitoring Chinese drills – dubbed Joint Sword 2024B – around the island
Footage captured the moment Taiwan’s coast guard warned a Chinese vessel spotted near Matsu Islands
A diagram released by the coast guard showed four fleets encircling Taiwan and moving in an anticlockwise direction around the island
Armed military vehicles patrol outside the Songshan Airport in Taipei after China deployed fighter jets and warships to encircle Taiwan on October 14, in drills Beijing said were aimed at sending a ‘stern warning’ to ‘separatist’ forces on the self-ruled island
Taiwan Navy Kuang Hua VI-class missile boats maneuver at the Keelung military harbor in Keelung city, Taiwan
The drills are testing troops’ ‘joint operations capabilities’ according to Captain Li Xi, spokesman for the Chinese military’s Eastern Theater Command.
They are taking place in ‘areas to the north, south and east of Taiwan Island,’ he said.
The drills are ‘focusing on subjects of sea-air combat-readiness patrol, blockade on key ports and areas’, Li said.
They also practised an ‘assault on maritime and ground targets’, and fighter jets and warships had been deployed, Chinese state media said.
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China’s coast guard was also dispatched to conduct ‘inspections’ around the island.
Taiwan’s defence ministry said Monday that 25 Chinese aircraft and seven navy vessels were detected around island at 8:00am local time.
A diagram released by the coast guard showed four fleets encircling Taiwan and moving in an anticlockwise direction around the island.
The coast guard of the eastern province of Fujian – the closest area on the mainland to the self-ruled island – also said it was conducting ‘comprehensive law enforcement patrols’ in waters near the Taiwan-controlled Matsu islands.
Taiwan said four ‘formations’ of China coast guard ships were patrolling around the island, but they had not entered its prohibited or restricted waters.
Reporters near the Hsinchu air force base, in the north of Taiwan, saw 12 fighter jets take off on Monday.
China on Monday warned that efforts towards ‘Taiwan independence’ and peace were ‘irreconcilable’ as its military launched its drills.
‘Taiwan independence and peace in the Taiwan Strait are irreconcilable,’ foreign ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning said, warning that ‘provocations from pro-independence forces will inevitably face countermeasures’.
The United States has said China’s actions were ‘unwarranted’ and risk ‘escalation’ as it called on Beijing to act with restraint.
This handout from China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) Eastern Theatre Command released on October 14 shows a map of locations of the ‘Joint Sword-2024B’ military drills being conducted by China around Taiwan
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning warned that efforts towards ‘Taiwan independence’ and peace were ‘irreconcilable’
The drills started before dawn today in a bid to send a ‘stern warning’, according to Beijing
Ching-te has been more outspoken than his predecessor Tsai Ing-wen in defending Taiwan’s sovereignty, angering Beijing, which calls him a ‘separatist’.
Lai vowed Monday to ‘protect democratic Taiwan, and safeguard national security’, while the defence ministry said it dispatched ‘appropriate forces’ in response to the drills.
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Outlying islands administered by Taipei were on ‘heightened alert’ and ‘aircraft and ships will respond to enemy situations in accordance with the engagement rules’, Taiwan’s defence ministry said.
Beijing said its exercises served as a ‘stern warning to the separatist acts of ‘Taiwan Independence’ forces’.
China has ramped up military activity around Taiwan in recent years, sending in warplanes and other military aircraft while its ships maintain a near-constant presence around the island’s waters.
‘In the face of enemy threats, all officers and soldiers of the country are in full readiness,’ Taiwan’s defence ministry said Monday.
Lai convened a high-level security meeting over the drills, said Joseph Wu, secretary-general of the National Security Council, who described the exercises as ‘inconsistent with international law’.
In his speech Thursday celebrating the island’s National Day, Lai vowed to ‘resist annexation’ of Taiwan and insisted Beijing and Taipei were ‘not subordinate to each other’.
Two Taiwanese Air Force Mirage 2000 fighter jet armed with missiles scramble from the Hsinchu Air Base, following China’s announcement of the military exercise Joint Sword-2024B that encircles Taiwan, in Hsinchu, Taiwan, on October 14
China’s exercises have gradually moved closer to the island’s shores
A military personnel keeps watch while on patrol outside Songshan Airport in Taipei on October 14
Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) announced on October 14 to conduct Joint Sword-2024B drills around Taiwan
Lai’s Democratic Progressive Party has long defended the sovereignty and democracy of Taiwan, which has its own government, military and currency.
Beijing on Monday said the drills were ‘a legitimate and necessary operation for safeguarding state sovereignty and national unity’.
Lieutenant Colonel Fu Zhengnan, a researcher at the Chinese Academy of Military Sciences, said in a video shared by state media that the drills could ‘switch from training to combat at any time.’
‘If Taiwan separatists provoke once, the PLA’s operation around the island will make their first move,’ Fu said, referring to China’s People’s Liberation Army.
Taiwan’s coast guard said Monday it had detained a Chinese man on one of its outlying islands after a possible ‘grey zone intrusion’, referring to tactics that fall short of a direct act of war.
During morning rush-hour in Taipei, people appeared to be largely unperturbed by the latest drills.
‘I won’t panic too much because they quite often have drills,’ 34-year-old engineer Benjamin Hsiao told AFP.
‘It’s not the first time in recent years anyway, so I feel a bit numb.’
The current dispute between China and Taiwan dates back to a civil war in which the nationalist forces of Chiang Kai-shek were defeated by Mao Zedong’s communist fighters and fled to Taiwan in 1949.
Since then, China and Taiwan have been ruled separately.