China has sent its largest ever daily deployment of warplanes into airspace close to Taiwan as part of a wider military exercise, confirming fears that Beijing would ratchet up tensions days after Taiwanese President Lai Ching-te asserted his country’s sovereignty.
The People’s Liberation Army said its forces practised “combat readiness patrols, blockade of key ports and areas, assault on maritime and ground targets and seizure of comprehensive superiority”, calling the drills “a stern warning to the separatist acts of ‘Taiwan Independence’ forces”.
Taiwan said 125 military aircraft were deployed in the PLA exercise on Monday.
The US said it was “seriously concerned” by the drills and condemned Beijing for threatening regional stability. China’s “response with military provocations to a routine annual speech is unwarranted and risks escalation”, said state department spokesperson Matthew Miller.
The EU said China’s military activities further increased cross-strait tensions and called on “all parties” to exercise restraint.
Lai’s office called on China to end military provocations and stop threatening Taiwan.
“There is a broad consensus among the international community on the importance of maintaining peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait and the Indo-Pacific region,” Lai’s office said. “China should face the reality of the existence of the Republic of China (Taiwan) and respect the Taiwanese people’s choice of a democratic and free way of life.”
The PLA exercises followed a National Day speech by Lai last Thursday in which he asserted Taiwan’s sovereignty but also appealed to China to work with him for peace. He also highlighted the 1911 uprising that overthrew Chinese imperial rule as part of Taiwan’s history, in an overture to those Taiwanese who embrace a Chinese identity.
Aides of Lai described his speech as a gesture of goodwill towards Beijing, while foreign observers viewed it as restrained and moderate.
“There were times Beijing reciprocated Taipei’s restraint. This could have been one of them. But they’re choosing a different path,” Rush Doshi, who worked on China affairs in US President Joe Biden’s National Security Council until earlier this year, posted on X on Monday.
Beijing has denounced Lai, who was elected in January, as a “dangerous separatist” and sharply stepped up manoeuvres near Taiwanese waters and airspace since he took office. China claims Taiwan as part of its territory and threatens to annex it by force if Taipei refuses to submit under its control indefinitely.
Lai’s predecessor Tsai Ing-wen used a visit to Europe — which China has also opposed — to call for the EU to stand firm in its support of Taiwan.
“Taiwan’s democracy, similar to European democracies, was built on the sacrifices of those who fought against dictatorship,” she told a conference in Prague hours after Beijing started its drills. Tsai said she was making her first visit to Prague to see “friends who are not afraid of intimidation”.
The PLA called its drills “Joint Sword 2024 B”, framing them as a sequel to manoeuvres organised three days after Lai’s inauguration in May.
The PLA said its aircraft carrier Liaoning participated in the exercise in waters east of Taiwan to practise “vessel-aircraft co-operation, joint air control, and strikes on maritime and ground targets”.
Beijing regularly uses military manoeuvres, and propaganda about them, to try to intimidate the Taiwanese public and put a strain on the island’s armed forces.
In most past drills that China framed as responses to events in Taiwan, the PLA introduced some new operational patterns, which it then continued to use. Taiwanese and western military officials have said this has eroded the fragile status quo between the two sides.
Taiwanese officials said they did not detect such new operational steps on Monday. Moreover, the PLA declared the drill “successfully completed” on Monday night, making it shorter than previous ones. But “indeed this time with their operations both on our western and eastern sides, they are creating a certain pressure on us,” said Lieutenant-General Hsieh Jih-sheng, deputy chief of the general intelligence staff of Taiwan’s armed forces.
Taiwan’s defence ministry said 90 of the PLA warplanes participating in the drills entered Taiwan’s self-declared early-warning zone, also by far the most ever spotted in a single day. Seventeen Chinese warships and 17 vessels from the Chinese coastguard, which helps assert Beijing’s expansive territorial claims and is part of the military command chain, also operated around Taiwan and its outlying islands, it added.
Monday’s coastguard component was larger than in the May exercises, which involved the coastguard for the first time.
The China Coast Guard said it would practise boarding and inspection of ships in waters of Taiwan-controlled islands off the Chinese coast, but Taiwan said no vessels were boarded.
If Beijing were to attempt boarding and inspection in Taiwanese waters or anywhere on its side of the Taiwan Strait, “we would use every possible means to prevent that”, said Hsieh Ching-chin, deputy director-general of Taiwan’s Coast Guard Administration, adding such moves would be a violation of international law.
Additional reporting by Steff Chávez in Washington and Raphael Minder in Warsaw