The recent Chinese drills around Taiwan are the second major military drills in less than a month.
China’s military says it has been conducting military exercises around the self-governing island of Taiwan that have focused on land and sea attacks, the second such exercise in less than a month.
The People’s Liberation Army Eastern Command said in a statement late Sunday that its forces had organized “joint combat readiness patrols and actual combat exercises” in the sea and airspace around Taiwan, which Beijing claims as its own.
The aim of the exercises is to test joint combat capabilities and “firmly counter the provocative actions of external forces and separatist forces of Taiwan independence,” said Colonel Shi Yi, a spokesman for the command, in a brief statement.
Taiwan’s presidential office said China was making “baseless allegations” and strongly condemned the exercises. Cross-strait and regional peace and stability are the shared responsibility of Taiwan and China.
Taiwan’s position is very clear as it will not escalate conflicts or provoke disputes but will firmly defend its sovereignty and security, the bureau said in a statement.
“The nation’s military is closely monitoring the situation in and around the Taiwan Strait and is responding calmly. Our people can rely on that,” she added.
Taiwan’s defense ministry said Monday it had spotted 57 Chinese military planes and four naval vessels operating on the island over the past 24 hours and shared maps on Twitter to show their flight paths.
About 28 of the planes flew into the Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ) off southwest Taiwan, she added, with some crossing the Taiwan Strait centerline, an unofficial buffer between the two sides. Two nuclear-capable H-6 bombers flew into southern Taiwan, the ministry’s map showed.
China held similar drills late last month after the United States passed a defense spending law that included support for Taiwan, with Taipei reporting 43 Chinese planes crossed the middle line. That same week, Taipei announced it would extend conscription from the current four months to one year starting in 2024.
China, which does not rule out the use of force to seize control of the island, has increased military activity in the waters and airspace near Taiwan since Tsai Ing-wen was first elected president in 2016. However, tensions rose sharply in August last year after then-US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi visited the island.
The Taiwanese government says only the Taiwanese people can decide the island’s future and has pledged to defend themselves if attacked by China.
Beijing’s latest maneuvers come as lawmakers from Germany arrived on Monday ahead of an expected ministerial visit later this year.
The visit was a “sign of solidarity” with the self-governing democracy, said Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann, chair of the parliamentary defense committee and head of the high-level delegation, the AFP news agency.
The deputies of the business-friendly Free Democratic Party (FDP) – a junior partner in the German government coalition – would meet with “high-ranking personalities from politics, civil society and the military”, said Strack-Zimmermann, and discuss the current “threat situation”. .
According to the Taiwanese government, the Chinese military sent 1,727 aircraft to Taiwan’s ADIZ in 2022. This compares to about 960 assaults in 2021 and 380 in 2020.
The US has no formal diplomatic ties with Taiwan, but is required by law to provide the island with the means of self-defense.