The US has accused China of putting the region’s security at risk after it launched a second day of military drills targeting Taiwan with a rehearsal blockade and attack.
China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) began the joint drills without notice on Tuesday morning, sending 76 aircraft and more than 20 Navy and Coast Guard ships, including the Shandong carrier group, to positions around Taiwan’s main island.
On Wednesday, the PLA said exercises would continue in the central and southern areas of the Taiwan Strait, practising hitting key ports and energy infrastructure. In contrast to Tuesday’s drills, the PLA said it would use live fire on Wednesday.
“The exercises focus on subjects of identification and verification, warning and expulsion, and interception and detention so as to test the troops’ capabilities of area regulation and control, joint blockade and control, and precision strikes on key targets,” it said in a statement.
On Wednesday the US state department said it remained committed to Taiwan and other allies and partners “in the face of China’s intimidation tactics and destabilising behaviour”.
“Once again, China’s aggressive military activities and rhetoric toward Taiwan only serve to exacerbate tensions and put the region’s security and the world’s prosperity at risk,” it said. “The United States supports peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait and opposes unilateral changes to the status quo, including through force or coercion.”
China’s Maritime Safety Administration announced late Tuesday a closed zone for shipping due to military drills until Thursday night in an area off the north part of the eastern province of Zhejiang, more than 500 km (310 miles) from Taiwan.
A senior Taiwan defence official told Reuters that was outside Taiwan’s “response zone”.
China’s Communist party (CCP) rulers claim Taiwan is a province which must be “reunified” with the mainland, and have not ruled out using force to do so. Analysts believe the PLA is not yet capable of the required full-scale invasion, but in the meantime it routinely launches greyzone tactics, military drills, economic, legal and cyber warfare, and disinformation campaigns.
In a series of statements, Chinese government officials have said the drills were targeted at “separatist” activity by Taiwan’s president, Lai Ching-te, who last month designated China a “hostile foreign force” and announced 17 measures to counter its influence and espionage operations.
It also announced a code name for the drills, “Strait Thunder-2025A”, in line with previous drills which contained suffixes suggesting they planned to hold more this year. On Tuesday China’s nationalistic tabloid, The Global Times, had said these drills were deliberately not named in order to show that such exercises were entirely normalised.
The drills have been accompanied by widely distributed propaganda materials, including videos depicting an attack on Taiwan, and a cartoon depicting Lai as a bug being held by chopsticks over a burning Taipei. A Tuesday propaganda poster was titled “closing in”. On Wednesday a second one was released titled “paralysis”.
In the face of growing CCP aggression, Lai has been more assertive in his approach to cross-strait tensions than his predecessor. Both his party – the pro-sovereignty DPP – and the opposition KMT are opposed to CCP rule over Taiwan, although they differ in opinion on how to maintain peace. Taiwan’s public is also overwhelmingly opposed to CCP rule. The CCP, however, claims it has historical sovereignty over Taiwan and that the majority of people – counting the 1.4 billion in China – support “reunification”.
