(UPDATE) TAIPEI — China deployed fighter jets and warships to encircle Taiwan on Monday, in drills Beijing said were aimed at sending a “stern warning” to “separatist” forces on the self-ruled island.
Beijing has not ruled out using force to bring Taiwan under its control, and Monday’s drills represent its fourth round of large-scale war games in just over two years.
The United States said China’s actions were “unwarranted” and risk “escalation” as it called on Beijing to act with restraint.
Taiwanese leader Lai Ching-te, who took office in May, has been more outspoken than his predecessor Tsai Ing-wen in defending the island’s sovereignty, angering China, which calls him a “separatist.”
Lai vowed on Monday to “protect democratic Taiwan and safeguard national security,” while Taipei’s Defense Ministry said it had dispatched “appropriate forces” in response to the drills.
Agence France-Presse (AFP) journalists near the Hsinchu air force base, in the north of Taiwan, saw 12 fighter jets take off on Monday.
Outlying islands administered by Taipei were on “heightened alert,” and “aircraft and ships will respond to enemy situations in accordance with the engagement rules,” the Defense Ministry said.
Beijing said its exercises served as a “stern warning to the separatist acts of ‘Taiwan Independence’ forces.”
The drills, dubbed Joint Sword-2024B, are testing troops’ “joint operations capabilities,” said Capt. Li Xi, spokesman for the Chinese military’s Eastern Theater Command.
They are taking place in “areas to the north, south and east of Taiwan Island,” he said, adding that these were “focusing on subjects of sea-air combat-readiness patrol, blockade on key ports and areas.”
They also practiced an “assault on maritime and ground targets,” the spokesman said.
The Liaoning aircraft carrier group “with its troops of army, navy, air force and rocket force” was also involved, he added.
The previous large-scale drills held in May, three days after Lai’s inauguration, were called “Joint Sword-2024A” and lasted two days.
China coast guard ‘inspections’
China’s coast guard was also dispatched to conduct “inspections” around the island.
A diagram released by the coast guard showed four fleets encircling Taiwan and moving in a counterclockwise direction around the island.
The coast guard of the eastern Chinese province of Fujian — the closest area on the mainland to the self-ruled island — also said it was conducting “comprehensive law enforcement patrols” in waters near the Taiwan-controlled Matsu islands.
Taiwan said four “formations” of Chinese coast guard ships were patrolling the island, but they had not entered its prohibited or restricted waters.
China has ramped up military activity around Taiwan in recent years, sending in warplanes and other military aircraft while its ships maintain a near-constant presence around the island’s waters.
“In the face of enemy threats, all officers and soldiers of the country are in full readiness,” Taiwan’s Defense Ministry said on Monday.
Lai convened a high-level security meeting over the drills, said Joseph Wu, secretary-general of the National Security Council, who described the exercises as “inconsistent with international law.”
In his speech celebrating the island’s National Day on Thursday, Lai vowed to “resist annexation” of Taiwan and insisted Beijing and Taipei were “not subordinate to each other.”
Lai’s Democratic Progressive Party has long defended the sovereignty and democracy of Taiwan, which has its own government, military and currency.
Beijing on Monday said the drills were “a legitimate and necessary operation for safeguarding state sovereignty and national unity.”
Lt. Col. Fu Zhengnan, a researcher at the Chinese Academy of Military Sciences, said in a video shared by state media that the drills could “switch from training to combat at any time.”
“If Taiwan separatists provoke once, the PLA’s operation around the island will make their first move,” Fu said, referring to the People’s Liberation Army, the Chinese military’s official name.
Taiwan’s coast guard said on Monday it had detained a Chinese man on one of its outlying islands after a possible “gray zone intrusion,” referring to tactics that fall short of a direct act of war.
The dispute between China and Taiwan dates back to a civil war in which the nationalist forces of Chiang Kai-shek were defeated by Mao Zedong’s communist fighters and fled to Taiwan in 1949.
Since then, China and Taiwan have been ruled separately.
