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TAIPEI, Taiwan — China unleashed a show of force against Taiwan on Thursday, firing missiles into the sea and threatening the island’s territorial waters in retaliation for Taipei hosting US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi for a disputed visit.
Military exercises have sent tensions in the Taiwan Strait to their highest level in decades, raising fears of a dangerous miscalculation at one of the world’s most tense geopolitical hotspots.
As the maneuvers began, China’s state broadcaster CCTV said the People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) Eastern Theater Command conducted long-range live fire exercises and “precision strikes” along eastern parts of the strait. Taiwan’s Ministry of Defense said the PLA fired 11 Dongfeng ballistic missiles in the waters off northeastern and southwestern Taiwan on Thursday afternoon.
Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan marks the beginning of a new phase of the campaign to pressure China
About 10 Chinese naval vessels crossed the median line of the strait on Wednesday evening and remained in the area until noon on Thursday, while Chinese military aircraft also crossed the unofficial maritime border on Thursday morning, Reuters reported, citing an unnamed source briefed on the development. A day earlier, during Pelosi’s visit, 22 Chinese warplanes breached the line, according to Taiwan’s defense ministry.
Pelosi’s visit to Taipei this week angered Chinese leaders, who said the high-level delegation was a violation of China’s territorial rights and a deliberate provocation amid deteriorating US-China relations. In response, Chinese authorities announced military exercises in six areas around Taiwan, which Taiwanese authorities said amounted to a “sea and air blockade.”
China’s ruling Communist Party has never ruled Taiwan, but Beijing claims a de facto independent democracy of 23 million people is an inalienable part of its territory and threatens to seize it by force.
The White House urged China not to overreact, saying Pelosi’s visit did not signal a change in US policy. But China’s military exercises, which will continue until Sunday, represent Beijing’s effort to establish a new normal for attacking its rival. In 2020, China denied the existence of a median line in the Taiwan Strait, after years of largely respecting the unofficial boundary that has helped prevent conflict in the 100-mile-wide waterway.
“Beijing could use Pelosi’s visit as an opportunity to change the status quo in the Taiwan Strait,” said Amanda Hsiao, senior China analyst at the International Crisis Group.
The Global Times, a state-run nationalist tabloid, quoted an anonymous Chinese military expert as describing the exercises as a “new beginning” for the PLA’s activities around Taiwan, which would not be limited to their former areas and would instead be “regularly held on Taiwan’s doorstep.”
China has historically used times of rising geopolitical tension to alter previously accepted norms of military conduct. In 2012, during a standoff with Japan over the Senkaku Islands, which Beijing calls the Diaoyu, China launched coast guard patrols in the region. Patrols continue today.
The six exclusion zones in this week’s maneuvers affect Taiwan from all sides and for the first time include a zone east of the island – a way to demonstrate China’s ability to attack Taiwanese forces operating from bases in Hualien and Taitung.
“It’s quite clear that they’re going to simulate how they might block Taiwan in the future,” said M. Taylor Fravel, director of the security studies program at MIT.
On Thursday, crowds gathered on Xiaoliuqiu, off the southwest coast of Taiwan’s main island, to watch for signs of Chinese firepower. Li Chi-Hsiang, 38, who runs a hostel on the island, said his clients were mostly worried about whether the training would affect their ability to dive.
“I told them not to worry. If China was going to invade, they would have come by now,” he said. “It’s not something we can stop. It’s no use worrying. If we must go to war, we will go to war.
Hsiao Wen-ming, chairman of the Donggang Fishermen’s Association in Pingtung near Taiwan’s southern coast, said he was worried about the safety of local fishermen. The possibility of more training will make them anxious to go out to sea, which will affect their livelihood in the long run.
“The Communist Party just does what it wants. What if it happens again?” he said.
Lu Li-shi, a former lieutenant commander of Taiwan’s navy, said the purpose of conducting the drills in Taiwan’s territorial waters was to intimidate residents.
“They want regular residents to see,” he said, “It’s a matter of hurting morale.”
Taiwan said the island’s armed forces had deployed defense systems and were monitoring surrounding areas. “We do not seek escalation, but we do not back down when it comes to our security and sovereignty,” the defense ministry tweeted.
The planned exercises are closer to Taiwan than China’s retaliatory exercises during the last Taiwan Strait crisis in 1995-1996. Three of the six exclusion zones encroach on the 12-nautical-mile coastal zone that Taiwan claims as its own. territorial waters.
During the 1990 standoff, China fired missiles that landed near the ports of Keelung and Kaohsiung after then-Taiwanese President Lee Teng-hui visited the United States.
This time, the crisis comes at a sensitive time for Chinese President Xi Jinping as he prepares to take an unprecedented third term at a political summit in the fall. The timing of the drills, after Pelosi left Taiwan, may signal Beijing’s desire to avoid a direct confrontation with the United States.
How Taiwan reacted to Pelosi’s visit, from ‘welcome’ to ‘American witch’
“It’s aimed at Taiwan,” Ivan Kanapati, a former deputy senior director for Asia at the White House National Security Council who served in the Trump and Biden administrations, said of China’s response.
“But if the warplanes come within 12 nautical miles, it will be difficult to ask Taiwan to exercise restraint.” They would be well within their right to shoot at anything on their territory,” he said.
Chinese military experts told CCTV that the no-go zones were meant to show China’s ability to control the narrowest point of the Taiwan Strait, as well as the point where the Bashi Channel, south of Taiwan, meets the Pacific Ocean, and sea lanes , which lead to the ports of Keelung and Kaohsiung.
Meng Xiangqing, director of the Strategic Studies Institute at the PLA-run National Defense University, described the approach as “closing the door and beating the dog.”
Nakashima reported from Washington. Vic Chiang and Pei-Lin Wu in Taipei contributed to this report.
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