Beijing/Taipei: China’s military continued its war games around Taiwan on Friday, conducting exercises designed to test their ability to “seize power” and control key areas. These drills, according to China, were initiated to punish Taiwan’s President Lai Ching-te.
The two days of maneuvers in the Taiwan Strait and around Taiwan-controlled islands near the Chinese coast commenced just three days after Lai took office. Taiwan has condemned China’s aggressive actions.
China, which views the democratically governed Taiwan as its territory and labels Lai a “separatist”, criticized his inauguration speech on Monday. In his address, Lai urged Beijing to cease its threats and asserted that the two sides of the strait “are not subordinate to each other”.
The Eastern Theatre Command of the People’s Liberation Army issued a brief statement confirming the continuation of their drills on Friday, dubbed “Joint Sword – 2024A”. The exercises aim to “test the ability to jointly seize power, launch joint attacks, and occupy key areas,” the statement said.
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China has never ruled out the use of force to bring Taiwan under its control. On Friday, the command shared an animated video on its WeChat social media account showing missiles launched at Taiwan from the ground, air, and sea, striking Taipei, Kaohsiung, and Hualien in balls of flame. The video concluded with the words “Sacred weapons to kill independence,” written in traditional Chinese characters used in Taiwan.
In response, Taiwan’s armed forces have mobilized to monitor and shadow Chinese forces. Taiwan’s defense ministry on Friday released images of F-16s armed with live missiles patrolling the skies. The ministry also provided images of Chinese coast guard vessels and Jiangdao-class corvettes participating in the drills, though the exact locations of these images were not specified.
As of 6 a.m. (2200 GMT) on Friday, Taiwan’s defense ministry reported detecting 49 Chinese military aircraft, 19 navy ships, and seven coast guard ships. Of the aircraft, 28 crossed the median line of the strait, an unofficial boundary that China does not recognize. The closest Chinese aircraft approached within 40 nautical miles (74 km) of Keelung, a northern city and navy base, according to a ministry-provided map.
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Rejected Diplomacy
President Lai has consistently offered to engage in talks with China, but these offers have been rebuffed. He maintains that only the people of Taiwan can decide their future and rejects Beijing’s sovereignty claims. Despite China’s military threats, life on the island continues as normal, with no undue alarm among its residents.
On China’s highly regulated Weibo social media platform, “Eastern Theatre” was the top searched term, with the majority of comments supporting the drills. Another trending topic was “the return of Taiwan”.
The Republic of China government retreated to Taiwan in 1949 after losing the civil war to Mao Zedong’s communists, who established the People’s Republic of China. The Republic of China remains Taiwan’s official name, though it is diplomatically recognized by only 12 countries, mostly small developing nations like Palau and Guatemala.
In a Friday commentary, the People’s Daily, the official newspaper of China’s ruling Communist Party, asserted that it is a common belief among Chinese people that the nation’s territory cannot be divided, the country cannot be thrown into chaos, and its people cannot be separated. The paper argued that the recent actions of the “leader of the Taiwan region” would only hasten the “destruction” of pro-independence forces in Taiwan.
China, the newspaper added, is willing to create “broad space for peaceful reunification” but will not tolerate any “separatist activities” in Taiwan.
Analysts, regional diplomats, and senior Taiwanese officials noted that the scale of the current drills is smaller than similar exercises conducted in 2022. These maneuvers were widely anticipated by Taiwanese and foreign officials but still heightened the risk of accidents or miscalculations. They suggested that Beijing’s actions were a calculated warning, indicating that Chinese forces could attempt a swift blockade to pressure Lai.
