Saturday 25.5.2024
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Last update 12:13
China ended two days of war games around Taiwan, in which it simulated bomber attacks and practiced boarding of ships, exercises that Taiwan condemned on Saturday as “flagrant provocation,” detailing a surge of planes and warships Chinese.
China’s state-run military television channel said late Friday that the drills had concluded. A commentary in the official People’s Liberation Army newspaper stated that they had lasted two days, from Thursday to Friday, as previously announced.
The Chinese Defense Ministry did not respond to calls seeking comment on Saturday.
China, which claims Taiwan as its own territory, launched the “Joint Sword – 2024A” exercises three days after Lai Ching-te became Taiwan’s president, a man Beijing calls a “separatist.”
Beijing said the exercises were “punishment” for Lai’s inauguration speech on Monday, in which he said the two sides of the Taiwan Strait “are not subordinate to each other,” which China viewed as a statement that They are both separate countries.
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Lai has repeatedly offered to hold talks with China but has been rebuffed. He claims that only the people of Taiwan can decide its future and rejects Beijing’s sovereignty claims. Taiwan’s government has condemned the moves, saying it will not be intimidated by Chinese pressure.
Taiwan’s Defense Ministry reported that on Friday it had detected 62 Chinese military aircraft and 27 navy ships, including 46 aircraft that crossed the median line of the Taiwan Strait, which previously served as an unofficial barrier between the two sides.
Chinese aircraft, including advanced Su-30 fighters and nuclear-capable H-6 bombers, flew in the Bashi Strait and Channel, which separates Taiwan from the Philippines, according to the ministry.
On Friday it released images taken by Taiwanese air force aircraft of a Chinese J-16 fighter jet and an H-6, but did not say exactly where they had been taken.
Taiwan’s presidential office declared on Saturday that Chinese military exercises had undermined the peaceful and stable status quo in the Taiwan Strait.
They also “constitute a flagrant provocation to the international order, and have raised serious concern and condemnation from the international community,” he said in a statement.
“Combat capabilities”
Taiwan’s Defense Minister Wellington Koo on Saturday returned what his ministry called the war operations center to normal, calling on personnel to “continue to increase their actual combat capabilities.”
Koo, like Lai, took office on Monday, having previously led Taiwan’s National Security Council.
The Chinese military’s Eastern Theater Command, whose forces carried out the exercises, posted a video on its social media on Saturday titled “A six-word rhyme to crush independence,” set to stirring martial music.
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The words “advance, encircle, block, attack, destroy and cut off” flash over images of fighters, bombers, soldiers and animated simulated missile attacks on Taiwan.
Over the past four years, China has periodically staged military activities around Taiwan, including large-scale war games in 2022 and 2023.
However, Taiwanese lawmaker Wang Ting-yu of Lai’s Democratic Progressive Party said the latest drills seemed more like a way to make noise than up the ante, as China had to respond to Lai’s speech.
“In comparison, they have been more moderate than the previous ones,” Wang, chairman of the Parliament’s Defense and Foreign Affairs Committee, declared on social media.
Still, China has maintained a barrage of invective against Lai.
The People’s Liberation Army Daily commentary, published as “the voice of the military,” said Lai was determined to act as a “pawn” for external forces to slow China’s development.
“If the Taiwanese separatist forces insist on going their own way or even take risks, the PLA will obey orders and take decisive measures to resolutely crush all separatist plots,” it said.
