The Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) yesterday fired 27 rockets during the second day of military drills near Taiwan, with 10 landing at sea within the nation’s 24 nautical mile (44.4km) contiguous zone, making them the closest-ever Chinese live-fire exercises, the military said at a news conference.
Lieutenant General Hsieh Jih-sheng (謝日升), the Ministry of National Defense’s deputy chief of the general staff for intelligence, said that the PLA fired the rockets in two batches using multiple rocket launchers, in the morning from Pingtan in China’s Fujian Province and in the afternoon from Fujian’s Shishi area.
Seventeen missiles were fired from Pingtan from 9am, all of which fell into the sea off northern Taiwan in a PLA-designated drill zone, outside the contiguous zone, Hsieh said.
Photo: Cheng Yu-chen, AFP
Ten missiles were launched from Shishi starting at 1pm, all of which landed in a PLA-designated drill zone southwest of Taiwan within the 24 nautical mile zone, he said.
That was the closest that PLA rockets have ever come to Taiwan proper in recent live-fire exercises, he added.
The UN Convention on the Law of the Sea defines a contiguous zone as up to 24 nautical miles from a coastal baseline within which coastal states can enforce customs, immigration, health and sanitation laws.
Photo: CNA
The PLA early on Monday announced the start of a new round of joint exercises around Taiwan, codenamed “Justice Mission 2025.”
As of 3pm yesterday, Taiwan’s military had detected 13 PLA Navy vessels, 15 China Coast Guard vessels and 71 Chinese military aircraft operating around Taiwan, Hsieh said.
Of the 71 aircraft, 35 crossed the median line of the Taiwan Strait and entered Taiwan’s air defense identification zone, he said.
Coast Guard Administration Deputy Director-General Hsieh Ching-chin (謝慶欽) said the agency closely monitored the movements of the 15 Chinese coast guard boats.
Eight of the 15 vessels briefly breached the contiguous zone, but were promptly warned away, he said.
Lieutenant General Lien Chih-wei (連志威), the ministry’s deputy chief of general staff for operations and planning, said that following the PLA’s announcement early on Monday, Taiwan’s armed forces established an ad hoc emergency operations center to respond to developments and to safeguard key infrastructure.
A senior Taiwanese security official told reporters that Beijing seemed to be using the exercises to practice striking land-based targets such as US-made High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems, or HIMARS, which have a range of about 300km and could hit coastal targets in southern China.
On Monday, the PLA’s Eastern Theater Command said that simulating a blockade of Taiwan’s vital deep-water ports at Keelung and Kaohsiung was central to the drills.
While Beijing said the exercises were meant as a stern warning against “Taiwan independence separatist forces,” some analysts said it was a response to a massive arms sale announced by Washington on Dec. 17.
Lyle Goldstein, Asia program director at the Washington-based Defense Priorities think tank, said that Beijing had likely gained confidence from its tariff negotiations with the US and sensed it could exploit divisions within Taiwan’s legislature.
“I do see an increasing level of realism in the exercises and increasing boldness,” Goldstein said. “Buying [more weapons] may sound like a silver bullet, but it’s far from that. This is an arms race Taiwan cannot possibly win.”
Bonnie Glaser, managing director of the Washington-based German Marshall Fund’s Indo-Pacific Program, said that the US weapons deal was one reason for the drills.
Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s comment that a Chinese attack on Taiwan would amount to a “survival-threatening” situation for Japan was also a factor, Glaser said.
Perry World House senior program manager Tom Shattuck said the arms sale packages were likely a reason for China’s exercises.
Glaser and Shattuck said that the PLA needs to conduct exercises in preparation for a potential invasion of Taiwan.
“Exercises as a form of punishment are still part of the equation, but we’ve also entered into a new phase where [China] will conduct regular exercises around Taiwan to continue to simulate and practice military contingencies,” Shattuck said.
Shattuck said that China is likely to conduct at least three large exercises around Taiwan next year and increase the number after that to put more pressure on Taipei.
Glaser said that the live-fire exercises lasted only one day, compared with four days in August 2022 following a visit to Taiwan by then-US House of Representatives speaker Nancy Pelosi.
The shorter duration “suggests that these exercises are performative, aimed at demonstrating China’s anger, but not going so far as to derail the improving US-China relationship,” she said.
Additional reporting by Reuters
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