Taipei (AFP) – China on Tuesday sent its army, navy, air and rocket forces to surround Taiwan for drills Beijing said were aimed at practising a blockade of the self-ruled island.
Taiwan dispatched its own aircraft and ships, and deployed land-based missile systems, in response to the drills and accused Beijing of being the world’s “biggest troublemaker”.
China had deployed 19 warships around the island in the 24-hours to 6:00 am (2200 GMT on Monday), including the Shandong aircraft carrier group, Taiwan’s defence ministry said.
Tensions between China and Taiwan – which are separated by the 180-kilometre (112-mile) Taiwan Strait – have escalated since Taiwanese President Lai Ching-te took office in May 2024.
Chinese leaders loathe Lai, who has been more outspoken than his predecessor Tsai Ing-wen in defending Taiwan’s sovereignty.
Lai last month called China a “foreign hostile force” and proposed measures to combat Chinese espionage and infiltration.
Tuesday’s exercises were aimed at sending a “stern warning and forceful deterrence” to alleged separatists in Taiwan, Beijing said.
They involved “sea-air combat-readiness patrols, joint seizure of comprehensive superiority, assault on maritime and ground targets, and blockade on key areas and sea lanes”, said Senior Colonel Shi Yi, spokesman of the Chinese military’s Eastern Theater Command.
Beijing’s armed forces “close in on Taiwan Island from multiple directions”, he said.
The Chinese military’s Eastern Theater Command – which oversees operations along the Taiwan Strait – shared a graphic with the title “closing in”.
Another graphic shared by the military depicted Lai as an insect being roasted over an open fire.
And a video shared by the military on X-like Weibo showed footage of weapons interspersed with animations of Sun Wukong, the legendary Monkey King from the classic Chinese novel “Journey to the West”.
The video climaxes with Chinese forces appearing to use satellites to mark targets across Taiwan, before ending with a flurry of rocket explosions while multiple Monkey Kings attack a giant frog monster.
China’s coast guard said it also conducted “law enforcement patrols” around the island.
“Pursuing ‘Taiwan independence’ means pushing the people of Taiwan into a dangerous situation of war,” Zhu Fenglian, a spokeswoman for Beijing’s Taiwan Affairs Office, said in a statement.
Taiwan’s Presidential Office “strongly condemned” China’s actions, and Premier Cho Jung-tai said “resorting to displays of military force is not what modern, progressive societies should pursue”.
I mean from the DPP’s perspective, that wouldn’t be a bad move. 100% chance the US’s “defense” of Taiwan consists of sacrificing as many locals as possible to make the war as long and expensive as possible for the PRC, while ensuring anything of value, including workers and factories, is destroyed.
If they handed the factories over, the US might make a meaningful effort to protect the island.
Of course, this is insane when simply maintaining the status-quo of “reunification, but sometime in the indefinite future” wouldn’t require signing your resources and labor to the US, getting stripped for parts, and then losing that war anyway, because the world’s largest industrial power has spent half a century preparing for this exact scenario.