The Ministry of National Defense yesterday said that live-fire Chinese drills in a province facing Taiwan are part of routine annual drills, but also possibly part of China’s “deterrence effect” in the waters of the Taiwan Strait.
The Chinese Maritime Safety Administration, in a notice late on Monday, said an area around Niushan Island in China’s Fujian Province would be closed off for four hours from 9am yesterday for live-fire drills.
Niushan sits just south of the Taiwan-controlled Matsu islands.
Photo: screen grab from Google Maps
The ministry in a statement said that the exercises are part of routine Chinese training and it was keeping a close watch, but it could not rule out that it was part of China “expanding its deterrent effect in conjunction with the dynamics in the Taiwan Strait.”
It did not elaborate.
China last week held a day of war games around Taiwan that it said were a warning against “separatist acts.”
Premier Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰) yesterday said that China should not be carrying out any such exercises given the threat to regional peace and stability.
“No matter how large the scale of the drill, they should not be frequent and close to Taiwan,” Cho said. “This will only cause unnecessary tension.”
Democratic Progressive Party Legislator Wang Ting-yu (王定宇), a co-convener of the legislature’s Foreign Affairs and National Defense Committee, said although the drill was some distance from Taiwan proper and therefore only posed a limited physical threat, it might have been intended as a blow to the nation’s morale.
The nation’s armed forces should take the exercise seriously and be on guard to deal with Beijing’s challenge up to and including the worst-case scenarion, he said.
DPP caucus deputy chief executive Hung Sun-han (洪申翰) said the move indicated that China could be ratcheting up the pressure on Taiwan by conducting military exercises and coast guard patrols on a weekly basis.
“The information we received shows no cause for alarm and little chance of mishaps,” Hung said. “The nation’s armed forces are well-prepared.”
Beijing should exercise restraint as its behavior has only increased Taiwanese anger and shown itself to be the region’s biggest troublemaker, he said.
Taiwan would not bow to “gray zone” activities, become accustomed to aggressive acts or concede the nation’s legal territories, he added.
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Hung Mong-kai (洪孟楷) said that the live-fire drills are being staged as a warning to the US and Taiwanese refuse to be treated as a target in other parties’ conflict.
The KMT calls on China to cease conducting drills in Taiwan’s environs as such acts provoke Taiwanese antipathy toward Beijing that negatively impacts cross-strait relations, he said.
The party also urged the DPP administration to issue a coherent message about China’s actions, he said, citing Representative to the US Alexander Yui’s (俞大?) remarks that the nation is ready to fight.
Yui should know he has no right to represent Taiwanese and only President William Lai (賴清德) has the right to make such utterances, he added.
Chen Kuan-hsien (陳冠憲), a researcher at the Taiwan National Security Association, said that numbing Taiwan could be part of China’s strategy.
China’s military activities make most Taiwanese feel pressured, angry or humiliated, but some have become indifferent, which might be the effect Beijing is trying to achieve, Chen said.
The China Coast Guard’s social media post on last week’s Joint Sword-2024B military exercises, which allegedly formed a heart shape around Taiwan proper, was part of Beijing’s strategy to undermine the nation’s civil defense program, he said.
Launching coordinated multidomain operations to test Taiwan and the global community is part of China’s continuous effort to evolve its strategy, he said.
Modern conflict is a contest of wills and Taiwan could respond to Beijing’s provocations by demonstrating its readiness to defend itself, he added.
The government should do more to inoculate Taiwanese society against misinformation and foreign meddling by disseminating knowledge about international relations and defense, as psychological defense is a key component in a nation’s defensive capabilities, he said.
Additional reporting by Liu Wan-lin and Fang Wei-li
‘ABUSE OF POWER’: Lee Chun-yi allegedly used a Control Yuan vehicle to transport his dog to a pet grooming salon and take his wife to restaurants, media reports said Control Yuan Secretary-General Lee Chun-yi (李俊俋) resigned on Sunday night, admitting that he had misused a government vehicle, as reported by the media. Control Yuan Vice President Lee Hung-chun (李鴻鈞) yesterday apologized to the public over the issue. The watchdog body would follow up on similar accusations made by the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and would investigate the alleged misuse of government vehicles by three other Control Yuan members: Su Li-chiung (蘇麗瓊), Lin Yu-jung (林郁容) and Wang Jung-chang (王榮璋), Lee Hung-chun said. Lee Chun-yi in a statement apologized for using a Control Yuan vehicle to transport his dog to a
INDO-PACIFIC REGION: Royal Navy ships exercise the right of freedom of navigation, including in the Taiwan Strait and South China Sea, the UK’s Tony Radakin told a summit Freedom of navigation in the Indo-Pacific region is as important as it is in the English Channel, British Chief of the Defence Staff Admiral Tony Radakin said at a summit in Singapore on Saturday. The remark came as the British Royal Navy’s flagship aircraft carrier, the HMS Prince of Wales, is on an eight-month deployment to the Indo-Pacific region as head of an international carrier strike group. “Upholding the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, and with it, the principles of the freedom of navigation, in this part of the world matters to us just as it matters in the
The High Court yesterday found a New Taipei City woman guilty of charges related to helping Beijing secure surrender agreements from military service members. Lee Huei-hsin (李慧馨) was sentenced to six years and eight months in prison for breaching the National Security Act (國家安全法), making illegal compacts with government employees and bribery, the court said. The verdict is final. Lee, the manager of a temple in the city’s Lujhou District (蘆洲), was accused of arranging for eight service members to make surrender pledges to the Chinese People’s Liberation Army in exchange for money, the court said. The pledges, which required them to provide identification
BEIJING’S ‘PAWN’: ‘We, as Chinese, should never forget our roots, history, culture,’ Want Want Holdings general manager Tsai Wang-ting said at a summit in China The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) yesterday condemned Want Want China Times Media Group (旺旺中時媒體集團) for making comments at the Cross-Strait Chinese Culture Summit that it said have damaged Taiwan’s sovereignty, adding that it would investigate if the group had colluded with China in the matter and contravened cross-strait regulations. The council issued a statement after Want Want Holdings (旺旺集團有限公司) general manager Tsai Wang-ting (蔡旺庭), the third son of the group’s founder, Tsai Eng-meng (蔡衍明), said at the summit last week that the group originated in “Chinese Taiwan,” and has developed and prospered in “the motherland.” “We, as Chinese, should never
RSS