China has sent jets and ships around Taiwan in what it said was practice for a blockade of the self-ruled island.
AFP takes a look at China’s increasing efforts at military intimidation around Taiwan in recent years:
Regular incursions
Relations between the governments of China and Taiwan have ebbed and flowed over the decades.
Tensions exploded in 1995 when China began test-firing missiles in the waters around Taiwan to protest against a visit by Taiwanese president Lee Teng-hui to his alma mater in the United States.
But China has notably ramped up military manoeuvres since the 2016 election of former president Tsai Ing-wen, who considers the island “already independent”, including with warplane flights into Taiwan’s so-called Air Defence Identification Zone.
Taipei said in 2023 it had detected the long-range TB-001 Chinese combat drone and 37 other Chinese aircraft circling Taiwan.
That was the first time Taiwan’s defence ministry had reported a Chinese military aircraft circling the island from one end of the Taiwan Strait’s median line, which China does not recognise, to the other, local media said.
Beijing now deploys planes and naval vessels around Taiwan on a near-daily basis.
China has also increasingly conducted major exercises around the island — usually in response to alleged “provocations” by Taipei.
Former US House speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to the island in August 2022 triggered Beijing’s largest-ever war games.
The drills ran for at least five days and involved what Beijing called a “conventional missile firepower assault” in waters to the east of Taiwan.
They were followed by more drills that month after another delegation of US lawmakers visited Taipei.
China went on to deploy 71 warplanes in military exercises around Christmas that year, which the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) said were a “strike drill” responding to unspecified “provocations” and “collusion” between the United States and Taiwan.
Simulated strikes
Cross-strait tensions spiked again in April 2023, when China held three days of military drills after a meeting between Tsai and Pelosi’s successor Kevin McCarthy.
The war games saw Beijing simulate targeted strikes on Taiwan and encirclement of the island, including “sealing” it off.
Chinese state media reported dozens of planes had practised an “aerial blockade”.
One of China’s three aircraft carriers, the Shandong, also participated in the exercises.
That August, a stopover in the United States by then vice president Lai drew Beijing’s ire, with the PLA holding new war games intended to serve as a “stern warning to the collusion of ‘Taiwan independence separatists’ with foreign elements”.
Lai was then elected president last January in a contest overshadowed by fears of military threats from Beijing.
Following his inauguration in May, China announced two days of drills as a “strong punishment for the separatist acts of ‘Taiwan independence’ forces”.
And in October it was a National Day speech by Lai in which he vowed to “resist annexation” that angered Beijing, which sent fighter jets and warships around the island in another round of its “Joint Sword 2024” exercises.
‘Parasite’
Beijing has continued its campaign of military intimidation this year, launching live-fire drills in February which Taipei condemned as dangerous and a violation of “international norms”.
Last month, China’s military vowed to tighten its “noose” around Taiwan should alleged “separatist” activities on the island continue.
And this time around it’s President Lai’s description of China as a “foreign hostile force” that has raised Beijing’s ire.
The country’s military released a crude cartoon describing Lai as a “parasite”, warning he was “courting ultimate destruction”.
Beijing’s Taiwan Affairs Office (TAO) warned that independence “means war” — and blamed Lai for the escalation of tensions.
Drills this week feature army, navy, air and rocket forces, as well as an aircraft carrier, Beijing and Taipei have said.
They are aimed at, among other things, practising a “blockade on key areas and sea lanes”, China’s military has said — a feat analysts say will be essential to victory in the event of an actual war.
Senior Colonel Zhang Chi, a professor at the military-linked National Defense University, told Beijing’s CCTV state broadcaster that such drills were now “routine”.
“For the People’s Liberation Army and the Eastern Theatre Command it’s like a regular everyday meal,” he said.
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