TAIPEI, Taiwan — China dispatched a record 125 aircraft, as well as its Liaoning aircraft carrier and ships, in large-scale military exercises surrounding Taiwan and its outlying islands Monday, simulating the sealing off of key ports in a move that underscores the tense situation in the Taiwan Strait, officials said.
China’s Defense Ministry said the drills were a response to the Taiwanese President Lai Ching-te’s refusal to accept Beijing’s demand that self-governed Taiwan acknowledge itself as a part of the People’s Republic of China under the rule of the Communist Party in Mr. Lai’s National Day speech last week.
Taiwan’s Ministry of National Defense said 90 of the aircraft, including warplanes, helicopters and drones, were spotted within Taiwan’s air defense identification zone. The single-day record counted aircraft from 5:02 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Shipping traffic was operating as normal, the ministry said.
The drills came four days after Taiwan celebrated the founding of its government on its National Day, when Mr. Lai said in a speech that China has no right to represent Taiwan and declared his commitment to “resist annexation or encroachment.”
“Our military will definitely deal with the threat from China appropriately,” Joseph Wu, secretary-general of Taiwan’s security council, said at a forum in Taipei, Taiwan’s capital. “Threatening other countries with force violates the basic spirit of the United Nations Charter to resolve disputes through peaceful means.”
Taiwan’s Presidential Office called on China to “cease military provocations that undermine regional peace and stability and stop threatening Taiwan’s democracy and freedom.” The State Department in Washington issued its own condemnation of the Chinese drills, calling them an attempt to intimidate Taiwan’s popularly elected leaders.
A map aired on China’s state broadcaster CCTV showed six large blocks encircling Taiwan indicating where the military drills were being held, along with circles drawn around Taiwan’s outlying islands. Taiwan’s defense ministry said the six areas focused on key strategic locations around and on the island.
China deployed its Liaoning aircraft carrier for the drills, and CCTV showed a J-15 fighter jet taking off from the deck of the carrier.
China’s People’s Liberation Army’s Eastern Theater Command spokesperson Senior Captain Li Xi said Monday evening that the drill was successfully completed.
Capt. Li said the navy, army air force and missile corps were all mobilized for the drills, which were an integrated operation. “This is a major warning to those who back Taiwan independence and a signifier of our determination to safeguard our national sovereignty,” the captain said in a statement on the service’s public media channel.
Taiwan’s Defense Ministry said it deployed warships to designated spots in the ocean to carry out surveillance and stand at ready. It also deployed mobile missile and radar groups on land to track the vessels at sea. It said as of Monday morning, they had tracked 25 Chinese warplanes and seven warships and four Chinese government ships, though it did not specify what types of ships they were.
On the streets of Taipei, residents were undeterred, having endured a constant stream of aggressive Chinese maneuvers in recent years. “I don’t worry, I don’t panic either, it doesn’t have any impact to me,” Chang Chia-rui said.
Another Taipei resident, Jeff Huang, said: “Taiwan is very stable now, and I am used to China’s military exercises. I have been threatened by this kind of threats since I was a child, and I am used to it.”
The U.S., Taiwan’s biggest unofficial ally, called China’s response to Mr. Lai’s speech unwarranted. “We call on [China] to act with restraint and to avoid any further actions that may undermine peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait and in the broader region,” State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said in the statement issued late Sunday night.
China held similar large-scale exercises after Mr. Lai was inaugurated in May. The new presidentcontinues the eight-year rule of the Democratic Progressive Party that rejects China’s demand that it recognize Taiwan is a part of China.
Also on Monday, China’s Taiwan Affairs Office announced it was sanctioning two Taiwanese individuals, Puma Shen and Robert Tsao, for promoting Taiwanese independence. Mr. Shen is the co-founder of the Kuma Academy, a nonprofit group that trains civilians on wartime readiness. Mr. Tsao donated $32.8 million to fund the academy’s training courses.
China also held massive military exercises around Taiwan and simulated a blockade in 2022 after a visit to the island by then- House Demcoratic Speaker Nancy Pelosi. China routinely states that Taiwan independence is a “dead end” and that annexation by Beijing is a historical inevitability. China’s military has increased its encircling of Taiwan’s skies and waters in the past few years, holding joint drills with its warships and fighter jets on a near-daily basis near the island.
Taiwan was a Japanese colony before being unified with China at the end of World War II. It split away in 1949 when Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalists fled to the island as Mao Zedong’s Communists defeated them in a civil war and took power.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.