The People's Liberation Army (PLA) of China says it is conducting exercise across five areas near Taiwan, with live-fire drills to be held on Tuesday.
China kicked off the drills around Taiwan on Monday which it called “legitimate and necessary” to safeguard national unity, soon after Washington approved the largest ever arms sale to Taiwan.
Senior Colonel Shi Yi, a spokesman for the PLA’s Eastern Theatre Command, said the exercise was a warning to “independence forces” and against external interference.
He said the drills – dubbed Justice Mission 2025 – were taking place in waters and airspace in the Taiwan Strait and areas to the north, southwest, southeast and east of Taiwan.
Shi said the exercise was being conducted by Eastern Theatre Command troops from the army, navy, air force and rocket force.
Live-fire drills would be held on Tuesday between 8am and 6pm, the command said in a separate statement.
“It is a stern warning against ‘Taiwan independence’ separatist forces, and it is a legitimate and necessary action to safeguard China’s sovereignty and national unity,” Shi said.
He said the exercise would include combat readiness patrols in the air and at sea, blockades of key ports and areas, and deterrence beyond the “island chain”, likely referring to the so-called first island chain.
The PLA sent fighter jets, bombers, unmanned aerial vehicles and other assets “in the air and sea areas of the central Taiwan Strait”, coordinating with long-range firepower to “conduct drills targeting land-based mobile targets, testing precision strike capabilities”, state broadcaster CCTV reported.
The Eastern Theatre Command said destroyers and fighter jets had also been deployed to the east of Taiwan for scenarios involving attacks on targets at sea, regional air control and anti-submarine exercises.
Beijing sees Taiwan as part of China, to be reunited by force if necessary.
Most countries, including the US and Japan, do not recognise Taiwan as an independent state, but Washington is opposed to any attempt to take the self-governed island by force and is committed to supplying it with weapons.
The large-scale drills were framed by state media outlets on Monday as a message to both Taiwan and the United States.
The PLA has plenty of strategic options to punish independence forces in Taiwan and to deter the US,” Major General Meng Xiangqing, who specialises in national security at the PLA’s National Defence University, told China Military Bugle, a social media account run by the PLA’s media centre.
“And they can turn the exercise into a war at any time.”
Fu Zhengnan, an expert at the PLA’s Academy of Military Science, cited the “recent frequent collusion between the US and Taiwan, which is egregious in nature” as one of the main reasons for this week’s exercise.
source: commonspace.eu with South China Morning Post (Hong Kong) and agencies
