Chinese warships and coast guard vessels were withdrawing from waters around Taiwan, and its latest military drills appear to be “over,” the Coast Guard Administration (CGA) said yesterday.
Taiwan remained on high alert yesterday after China staged massive military drills around the nation, keeping its emergency maritime response center running as it monitored Chinese naval maneuvers, the CGA said.
In the exercises named “Justice Mission 2025,” China launched missiles and deployed dozens of fighter jets, navy ships and coast guard vessels around Taiwan on Monday and Tuesday in live-fire drills aimed at simulating a blockade of the nation’s key ports and assaults on maritime targets, and the show of force drew concern from Western allies.
Photo: Ann Wang, REUTERS
Taipei condemned the drills as a threat to regional security and a blatant provocation.
Chinese ships were moving away from Taiwan, Ocean Affairs Council Minister Kuan Bi-ling (管碧玲) said.
“The maritime situation has calmed down, with ships and vessels gradually departing. As China has not announced the conclusion of the military exercises, the emergency response center remains operational,” Kuan wrote on Facebook late on Tuesday night.
A spokesperson for the Eastern Theater Command of China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) yesterday said it had “successfully completed” the drills.
A CGA official said that all 11 Chinese coast guard ships had left waters near Taiwan and were continuing to move away.
A security official said emergency response centers for the military and coast guard stayed active.
The Ministry of National Defense yesterday said that 77 Chinese military aircraft, and 25 navy and coast guard vessels had been operating around the nation in the previous 24 hours.
Among them, 35 military planes had crossed the Taiwan Strait median line that separates the two sides, it added.
As the war games unfolded, the ambassadors to China from countries that make up the Quad grouping convened in Beijing on Tuesday.
US Ambassador David Perdue posted on social media a photograph of himself with the Australian, Japanese and Indian ambassadors at the US embassy. He called the Quad a “force for good” working to maintain a free and open Indo-Pacific region, but gave no details about the meeting.
The US embassy did not immediately respond to a request for comment about the meeting.
The drills, China’s most extensive war games by coverage area to date, forced dozens of domestic flights to be canceled, and jets and warships were dispatched to monitor the PLA’s movements.
Soldiers were seen running rapid-response drills, including putting up barricades at various locations.
China claimed the exercises to be a “necessary and just measure” to safeguard national sovereignty and territorial integrity, China’s Taiwan Affairs Office spokesperson Zhang Han (張?) told reporters at weekly briefing yesterday.
They were “a stern warning against Taiwan independence separatist forces and external interference,” she added.
China’s state-run Xinhua news agency published an article summarizing “three key takeaways” from the drills, which began 11 days after the US announced a record US$11.1 billion arms package for Taiwan.
The simulated “encirclement” demonstrated the PLA’s ability to “press and contain separatist forces while denying access to external interference — an approach summarized as ‘sealing internally and blocking externally,’” the article said, citing Zhang Chi (張弛), a professor at PLA National Defense University.
PLA Eastern Theater Command spokesperson Senior Captain Li Xi (李熹) said Chinese troops would keep training to “resolutely thwart the attempts of ‘Taiwan Independence’ separatists and external intervention.”
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