The US is closely watching the drills China is conducting around Taiwan, and is confident that it has enough resources and capabilities to ensure peace and stability in the region, the American Institute in Taiwan (AIT) said yesterday, while the EU called for restraint.
In Washington, a US Department of State spokesperson said that the US has “consistently urged restraint and no change to the status quo,” adding that it has ample resources to fulfill its security commitments in Asia.
The remarks were issued as Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) drills around Taiwan entered their second day yesterday.
Photo: Carlos Garcia Rawlins, Reuters
The PLA’s Eastern Theater Command on Saturday announced that it would be conducting its “Joint Sword” exercises in the Taiwan Strait, as well as in the sea and air to the north, south and east of Taiwan from Saturday to today.
The drills are a response to President Tsai Ing-wen’s (蔡英文) meeting with US House of Representatives Speaker Kevin McCarthy on Wednesday during a stopover in California at the tail end of her 10-day trip to visit Taiwan’s allies in Central America.
Among the Chinese military aircraft detected were an undisclosed number of Sukhoi SU-30 fighter jets, Shenyang J-11 and J-16D fighter jets, and KJ-500 airborne early warning and control planes, the Ministry of National Defense (MND) said in a statement.
As of 4pm yesterday, a total of 70 warplanes and 11 warships were detected around Taiwan, with 35 planes either crossing the median line of the Taiwan Strait or entering into the southwestern part of Taiwan’s air defense identification zone (ADIZ), the ministry said.
The nation’s armed forces were monitoring the situation, it said, adding that they would remain on high alert while making every effort to defend the country’s sovereignty and national security.
The armed forces are also keeping a close eye on the PLA Rocket Force using the joint intelligence and surveillance system, in case the PLA conducts live-fire rocket and missile drills in nearby waters, the ministry said.
“The first day of the exercise focused on testing the task force capabilities in seizing control of the sea, air and information under the support of the joint combat system, as the forces simultaneously pushed forward to encircle the island, creating a suppressive situation in which the island is surrounded from all directions,” state-run China Central Television (CCTV) reported on Saturday.
CCTV yesterday said that the drills had “simulated joint precision strikes against key targets on Taiwan island and surrounding waters,” and that forces “continued to maintain the situation of closely encircling the island.”
China’s air force had deployed dozens of aircraft to “fly into the target airspace,” and ground forces had carried out drills for “multi-target precision strikes,” CCTV said.
The drills have so far been conducted in international waters or China’s territorial waters, not in Taiwan’s territorial waters.
The Chinese aircraft carrier Shandong is on what is expected to be long-range training exercises about 200 nautical miles (370.4km) east of Taiwan.
Exercises today are expected to include live-fire drills off China’s Fujian Province, about 80km south of Taiwan’s Matsu Islands and 190km from Taipei.
“These operations serve as a stern warning against the collusion between separatist forces seeking Taiwan independence and external forces and against their provocative activities,” PLA spokesman Shi Yin (施毅) said.
China’s Fujian Maritime Safety Administration also announced that it on Saturday held live-fire exercises in China’s territorial waters near its Fujian Province’s Luoyuan Bay, which is about 200km northwest of Taiwan, and would be doing so again tomorrow, and on Wednesday and Saturday, and Monday and Wednesday next week from 8am to 12pm.
US Representative Michael McCaul, a Republican who led a congressional delegation to Taiwan for three days last week, told Fox News on Friday that the US might send troops to Taiwan if Beijing attacks.
“If communist China invaded Taiwan, it would certainly be on the table, and something that would be discussed by [the US] Congress and with the American people,” he said.
“Conflict is always a last resort,” he said, adding that he and fellow lawmakers traveled to Taiwan to “provide deterrence to China.”
China’s saber-rattling “galvanizes the United States’ support for Taiwan,” he added.
Asia-Pacific Elite Interchange Association secretary-general Wang Chih-sheng (王智盛) yesterday said that Chinese military drills in the Taiwan Strait are “a lot of thunder, but little rain.”
“The exercises are not so much a sanction against Taiwan as they are a form of internal propaganda. The main purpose is to appease domestic nationalist sentiment in China,” he said.
China was unable to stop Tsai from visiting the US or meeting McCarthy, so all it could do to appease angry nationalists was to hold such drills, he said.
“Part of the live-fire exercises were concentrated near China’s coastal areas, such as Pingtan County in Fujian Province, showing that they were held for a domestic audience,” Wang said.
China has learned from the backlash it received following its military exercises around Taiwan in August last year, after then-US House speaker Nancy Pelosi visited Taipei, he said.
Those drills also increased support for Taiwan, he said, adding that China is being more restrained this time to avoid a repeat of that situation.
China held off on conducting the drills until after Tsai and McCarthy finished their meeting, and until after French President Emmanuel Macron and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen left Beijing, where they met Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平), also to avoid an international backlash, Wang said.
RESPONSE: The transit sends a message that China’s alignment with other countries would not deter the West from defending freedom of navigation, an academic said Canadian frigate the Ville de Quebec and Australian guided-missile destroyer the Brisbane transited the Taiwan Strait yesterday morning, the first time the two nations have conducted a joint freedom of navigation operation. The Canadian and Australian militaries did not immediately respond to requests for comment. The Ministry of National Defense declined to confirm the passage, saying only that Taiwan’s armed forces had deployed surveillance and reconnaissance assets, along with warships and combat aircraft, to safeguard security across the Strait. The two vessels were observed transiting northward along the eastern side of the Taiwan Strait’s median line, with Japan being their most likely destination,
‘NOT ALONE’: A Taiwan Strait war would disrupt global trade routes, and could spark a worldwide crisis, so a powerful US presence is needed as a deterrence, a US senator said US Senator Deb Fischer on Thursday urged her colleagues in the US Congress to deepen Washington’s cooperation with Taiwan and other Indo-Pacific partners to contain the global security threat from China. Fischer and other lawmakers recently returned from an official trip to the Indo-Pacific region, where they toured US military bases in Hawaii and Guam, and visited leaders, including President William Lai (賴清德). The trip underscored the reality that the world is undergoing turmoil, and maintaining a free and open Indo-Pacific region is crucial to the security interests of the US and its partners, she said. Her visit to Taiwan demonstrated ways the
GLOBAL ISSUE: If China annexes Taiwan, ‘it will not stop its expansion there, as it only becomes stronger and has more force to expand further,’ the president said China’s military and diplomatic expansion is not a sole issue for Taiwan, but one that risks world peace, President William Lai (賴清德) said yesterday, adding that Taiwan would stand with the alliance of democratic countries to preserve peace through deterrence. Lai made the remark in an exclusive interview with the Chinese-language Liberty Times (sister paper of the Taipei Times). “China is strategically pushing forward to change the international order,” Lai said, adding that China established the Asia Infrastructure Investment Bank, launched the Belt and Road Initiative, and pushed for yuan internationalization, because it wants to replace the democratic rules-based international
WAR’S END ANNIVERSARY: ‘Taiwan does not believe in commemorating peace by holding guns,’ the president said on social media after attending a morning ceremony Countries should uphold peace, and promote freedom and democracy, President William Lai (賴清德) said yesterday as Taiwan marked 80 years since the end of World War II and the Second Sino-Japanese War. Lai, Vice President Hsiao Bi-khim (蕭美琴) and other top officials in the morning attended a ceremony at the National Revolutionary Martyrs’ Shrine in Taipei’s Zhongshan District (中山) to honor those who sacrificed their lives in major battles. “Taiwanese are peace-loving. Taiwan does not believe in commemorating peace by holding guns,” Lai wrote on Facebook afterward, apparently to highlight the contrast with the military parade in Beijing marking the same anniversary. “We
RSS