China launches drills around Taiwan in angry response to V-P William Lai’s US trip

SHANGHAI – China launched military drills around Taiwan on Saturday as a “serious warning” to separatist forces in an angry but widely expected response to

Vice-President William Lai’s visit to the US

, drawing condemnation from Taipei.

Mr Lai, the front runner to be Taiwan’s next president at elections in January, returned from the United States on Friday. He officially made only stopovers on his way to and from Paraguay, but gave speeches while in the US.

China views democratically governed Taiwan as its own territory despite the strong objections of the island’s government.

The People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) Eastern Theatre Command, which has responsibility for the area around Taiwan, said in a brief statement it was carrying out joint naval and air combat readiness patrols around the island.

It said it was also holding joint exercises and training of naval and air forces, focusing on areas such as ship-aircraft coordination and seizing control, to test the forces’ “actual combat capabilities”.

“This is a serious warning against Taiwan independence separatist forces colluding with external forces to provoke,” it said.

‘Normal diplomatic interactions’

The PLA command released video footage, purportedly taken on Saturday, showing J-16 and J-10 fighter jets and a naval destroyer on patrol.

Equipment deployed in the drills included destroyers, frigates and fast-attack missile boats, as well as fighters, early-warning and jamming aircraft, which “assembled in a predetermined area”, it said, without giving details.

The forces carried out “omnidirectional encirclement of the island”, the command added.

Taiwan’s Defence Ministry on Saturday condemned the drills, saying it would send appropriate forces to respond and has the ability, determination and confidence to ensure national security.

“The launch of the military exercise this time not only does not help peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait, but also highlights (China’s) militaristic mentality,” the ministry said in a statement.

The government’s Mainland Affairs Council, which sets Taiwan’s China policy, urged Beijing to stop its intimidation and start talks, saying Taiwan’s people were determined to defend themselves and would never succumb to threats of force.

“The Republic of China, Taiwan, is a sovereign country and has a legitimate and legal right to conduct normal diplomatic interactions with friendly countries,” it said in a statement, using the island’s formal name.

Taipei had said China was likely to conduct military exercises near the island this week, using Mr Lai’s US stopovers as a pretext to intimidate voters ahead of 2024’s presidential election and make them “fear war”.

Taiwan’s Foreign Minister Joseph Wu wrote on X, the social media platform previously known as Twitter, that China had made it clear it wanted to shape the island’s election, but it was up to the Taiwanese to decide, “not the bully next door”.

“Look, China should hold its own elections; I am sure its people would be thrilled,” he added.

Taiwan’s Defence Ministry released a short video of undated footage showing its forces on manoeuvres at sea, on city streets and across the countryside.

Hours before the drills, US President Joe Biden and the leaders of South Korea and Japan agreed at Camp David to deepen defence and economic cooperation, while reaffirming “the importance of peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait as an indispensable element of security and prosperity in the international community”.

The ministry said that since Saturday morning, it had detected 42 Chinese aircraft and eight ships in drills around the island.

A total of 26 Chinese aircraft crossed the median line of the 100km-wide Taiwan Strait, the ministry said in a statement. For decades, the line served as an unofficial barrier between the two militaries.

The full extent of Saturday’s manoeuvres was not immediately clear, and there was no sign of alarm on the streets of Taiwan, which has long been used to China’s threats.

“I don’t think there will be war; I am unafraid,” said university student Chou Yu-hsuan, 20.

Regional defence attaches and analysts were scrutinising the scale and intensity of the drills, seeking to gauge them against intensive Chinese war games in August 2022 and this April.

After then US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi visited Taipei in 2022, China’s military fired missiles over Taiwan, some landing in Japan’s exclusive economic zone, and staged naval drills around the island in what Taipei described as preparations for a full invasion.

The April drills, after

President Tsai Ing-wen met current House Speaker Kevin McCarthy

on a stopover in California, were smaller but involved full combat exercises by China’s two aircraft carriers, some off the island’s Pacific coast.

A senior Taiwan official familiar with security planning told Reuters that, unlike in April, Beijing had not named the current drills and had waited until after the Camp David summit to carry them out in a sign that China wants to “reduce direct confrontation” with the international community.

Mr Lai has said he is a “practical worker for Taiwan independence”. On the campaign trail, however, he has pledged to keep the status quo and repeatedly offered talks with Beijing.

Beijing’s confirmation of drills was accompanied by a volley of state press articles condemning Mr Lai, with the official Xinhua news agency branding him “Lai the liar”.

Shortly before the military’s announcement, the Communist Party of China’s Taiwan Work Office said Mr Lai was “shamelessly” trying to “rely on the United States to seek independence”.

Mr Lai had “stubbornly stuck to the Taiwan independence stance”, and his US stopovers were “a disguise he used to sell out the interests of Taiwan in order to seek gains in the local election through dishonest moves”, it said.

Mr Lai had travelled to Paraguay for the inauguration of its president. The landlocked South American nation is one of only 13 countries to maintain formal diplomatic ties with Taiwan.

The Taiwanese Vice-President posted on Facebook pictures of himself in the capital Asuncion, chatting to US Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, as well as Spain’s King Felipe VI and Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.

The US, like most countries, has no formal ties with Taiwan, but is its strongest international backer, bound by law to provide the island with the means to defend itself.

China has over the past three years ramped up military pressure on Taiwan, including sending military aircraft and warships near the island. REUTERS