Taiwan Air Force Mirage 2000 fighter jets wait to take off from a base in Hsinchu, northern Taiwan, on Thursday.
YASUYOSHI CHIBA/AFP via Getty Images
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YASUYOSHI CHIBA/AFP via Getty Images
China launched military exercises around Taiwan the week the democratic Asian island inaugurated a new president who called on China in his inaugural speech to “cease its political and military intimidation” of Taiwan.
China’s Eastern Theater Command said the air force, navy and infantry would be involved in the war exercises, which will last until Friday. Chinese state media said the exercises were a show of force intended to “serve as severe punishment for the separatist acts of Taiwan’s pro-independence forces” – a veiled reference to Taiwan’s new president, Lai Ching-te, whom the China called it “dangerous separatist”. .”
Taiwan said it sent air and naval forces to monitor the exercises, which its defense ministry called an “irrational provocation” that “highlights (China’s) hegemonic nature.”
Taiwan’s National Security Council warned as early as March that it expected China to launch war drills after Taiwan’s inauguration. Summer and early fall are typically the time when China holds its military rehearsals, and Beijing held military rehearsals shortly before or after Taiwan’s two previous inaugurations.
But the timing and scale of the exercises, which last until Friday, are a grim reminder that China wants to control self-ruled Taiwan and has not ruled out an outright invasion to achieve it.
China first launched military exercises that encircled all sides of Taiwan and its small, remote islands in the summer of 2022, after then-Speaker of the House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi visited in Taipei, much to the annoyance of China. Since then, China has significantly increased regularized military intimidation around Taiwan, including near-daily air and sea patrols.
A survey released this month by the Washington, DC-based think tank Brookings Institute found that in 2023, 64.8% of respondents said they were worried about a war between China and Taiwan, an increase by 7.4 percentage points compared to 2021.
In response to Chinese military aggression, Lai’s party, the Democratic Progressive Party, led by his predecessor, former President Tsai Ing-wen, launched military reforms and increased military spending, moves they say will deter a Chinese invasion by making the cost of war too high. Last year, they also extended conscription for young men to one year (from four months) and allowed women in their reserve forces.
Lai, the son of a coal miner who trained as a doctor before entering politics, was criticized for comments he made in 2017, while serving as prime minister of Taiwan, in which he called himself a “pragmatic worker for Taiwan independence.”
His inaugural address did not deviate from an unofficial “status quo” that keeps Taiwan’s sovereign status ambiguous, one that most Taiwanese support rather than declaring the island’s formal independence. Most of the world, including the United States, does not recognize Taiwan as a country, a remnant of an ongoing rivalry between the Chinese and Taiwanese governments that stemmed from a civil war last century.
But Lai asserted that “the Republic of China and the People’s Republic of China are not subordinate to each other”, referring to Taiwan and China respectively – a position that China considers a violation of its principle according to which Taiwan is part of its territory.
The Chinese government’s top office responsible for Taiwan affairs criticized Lai’s speech this week, saying it sent “a dangerous signal” of seeking Taiwan independence.
NPR News
