China employed a record 125 aircraft, as well as its Liaoning aircraft carrier and ships, in large-scale military exercises surrounding Taiwan and its outlying islands on Monday (October 14, 2024), simulating the sealing off of key ports in a move that underscores the tense situation in the Taiwan Strait, officials said.

China made clear it was to punish Taiwan’s President for rejecting Beijing’s claim of sovereignty over the self-governed island.

The drills came four days after Taiwan celebrated the founding of its Government on its National Day, when Taiwanese President Lai Ching-te said in a speech that China has no right to represent Taiwan and declared his commitment to “resist annexation or encroachment.”

“This is a resolute punishment for Lai Ching-te’s continuous fabrication of ’Taiwan independence’ nonsense,” China’s Taiwan Affairs Office said in a statement.

Taiwan’s Ministry of National Defence said 90 of the aircraft, including warplanes, helicopters and drones, were spotted within Taiwan’s air defence identification zone. The single-day record counted aircraft from 5.02 a.m. to 4.30 p.m. Shipping traffic was operating as normal, the ministry said.

Taiwan remained defiant. “Our military will definitely deal with the threat from China appropriately,” Joseph Wu, secretary-general of Taiwan’s security council, said at a forum in Taipei, Taiwan’s capital. “Threatening other countries with force violates the basic spirit of the United Nations Charter to resolve disputes through peaceful means.”

Taiwan’s Presidential Office also called on China to “cease military provocations that undermine regional peace and stability and stop threatening Taiwan’s democracy and freedom.”

A map aired on China’s state broadcaster CCTV showed six large blocks encircling Taiwan indicating where the military drills were being held, along with circles drawn around Taiwan’s outlying islands.

Taiwan’s defence ministry said the six areas focused on key strategic locations around and on the island.

China deployed its Liaoning aircraft carrier for the drills, and CCTV showed a J-15 fighter jet taking off from the deck of the carrier.

China’s People’s Liberation Army’s Eastern Theater Command Spokesperson Senior Captain Li Xi said Monday (October 14, 2024) evening that the drill was successfully completed.

Mr. Li said the navy, army air force and missile corps were all mobilised for the drills, which were an integrated operation. “This is a major warning to those who back Taiwan independence and a signifier of our determination to safeguard our national sovereignty,” Mr. Li said in a statement on the service’s public media channel.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning said at a daily briefing that China did not consider relations with Taiwan a diplomatic issue, in keeping with its refusal to recognise Taiwan as a sovereign state.

“I can tell you that Taiwan independence is as incompatible with peace in the Taiwan Strait as fire with water. Provocation by the Taiwan independence forces will surely be met with countermeasures,” Mr. Mao said.

Taiwan’s Defence Ministry said it deployed warships to designated spots in the ocean to carry out surveillance and stand at ready. It also deployed mobile missile and radar groups on land to track the vessels at sea. It said as of Monday (October 14, 2024) morning, they had tracked 25 Chinese warplanes and seven warships and four Chinese government ships, though it did not specify what types of ships they were.

On the streets of Taipei, residents were undeterred. “I don’t worry, I don’t panic either, it doesn’t have any impact to me,” Chang Chia-rui said.

Another Taipei resident, Jeff Huang, said: “Taiwan is very stable now, and I am used to China’s military exercises. I have been threatened by this kind of threats since I was a child, and I am used to it.”

The U.S., Taiwan’s biggest unofficial ally, called China’s response to Lai’s speech unwarranted. “We call on (Beijing’s government) to act with restraint and to avoid any further actions that may undermine peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait and in the broader region,” State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said in a statement.

China held similar large-scale exercises after Lai was inaugurated in May. Lai continues the eight-year rule of the Democratic Progressive Party that rejects China’s demand that it recognises Taiwan is a part of China.

China also held massive military exercises around Taiwan and simulated a blockade in 2022 after a visit to the island by Nancy Pelosi, who was then speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives. China routinely states that Taiwan independence is a “dead end” and that annexation by Beijing is a historical inevitability. China’s military has increased its encircling of Taiwan’s skies and waters in the past few years, holding joint drills with its warships and fighter jets on a near-daily basis near the island.

Also, on Monday (October 14, 2024), China’s Taiwan Affairs Office announced it was sanctioning two Taiwanese individuals, Puma Shen and Robert Tsao, for promoting Taiwanese independence. Mr. Shen is the co-founder of the Kuma Academy, a nonprofit group that trains civilians on wartime readiness. Mr. Tsao donated $32.8 million to fund the academy’s training courses. Mr. Shen and Mr. Tsao are forbidden to travel to China, including Hong Kong.

Taiwan was a Japanese colony before being unified with China at the end of World War II. It split away in 1949 when Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalists fled to the island as Mao Zedong’s Communists defeated them in a civil war and took power.

U.S. troopers in battle gear walk under the scorching sun during a joint military exercise on Wednesday, May 8, 2024, in Laoag, Ilocos Norte, northern Philippines. American, Australian and Filipino forces launched a barrage of high-precision rockets, artillery fire and airstrikes to sink a ship Wednesday as part of largescale war drills in waters facing the disputed South China Sea that has antagonized Beijing.
| Photo Credit: AP

Military force from the United States, Australian and the Philippines launched a barrage of high-precision rockets, artillery fire and airstrikes to sink a ship on May 8 as part of largescale war drills in waters facing the disputed South China Sea that have antagonized Beijing.

Military officials and diplomats from several countries, along with journalists, watched the display of firepower from a hilltop along a sandy coast in Laoag City on May 8 in Ilocos Norte, Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr.’s northern home province.

More than 16,000 military personnel from the United States and the Philippines, backed by a few hundred Australian troops and military observers from 14 countries were participating in annual combat-readiness drills called Balikatan, Tagalog for shoulder-to-shoulder, which started on April 22 and will end on Friday.

It’s the latest indication of how the United States and the Philippines have bolstered a defense treaty alliance that started in the 1950s.

Mr. Marcos has ordered his military to shift its focus to external defense from decades-long domestic anti-insurgency operations as China’s increasingly aggressive actions in the South China Sea become a top concern. That strategic shift dovetails with the efforts of President Joe Biden and his administration to reinforce an arc of alliances in the Indo-Pacific region to counter China.

China has angered the Philippines by repeatedly harassing its navy and coast guard ships with the use of powerful water cannons, a military-grade laser, blocking movements and other dangerous maneuvers in the high seas near two disputed South China Sea shoals that have led to minor collisions. Those have caused several injuries to Filipino navy personnel and damaged supply boats.

“We’re under the gun,” Philippine ambassador to Washington Jose Romualdez told The Associated Press in a telephone interview.

“We don’t have the wherewithal to be able to fight all of this bullying coming from China so where else will we go?” Mr. Romualdez asked. “We went to the right party which is the United States and those that believe in what the U.S. is doing.”

China has accused the Philippines of setting off the hostilities in the disputed waters by encroaching into what it says are its offshore territories, demarcated by 10 dashes on a map. This has often prompted the Chinese coast guard and navy to take steps to expel Philippine coast guard and other vessels from that area. The Philippines, backed by the U.S. and its allies and security partners, has repeatedly cited a 2016 international arbitration ruling based on the United Nations Convention of the Law of the Sea that invalidated China’s claim over virtually the entire South China Sea on historical grounds.

China did not participate in the arbitration complaint filed by the Philippines in 2013, rejected the ruling, and continues to defy it.

After an hour of the combat-readiness drills, black smoke started to billow from the stern of the mock enemy ship that was struck by missile fire and it started to sink ,as shown on a monitor watched by foreign military guests and journalists. U.S. and Philippine warplanes later dropped bombs on the BRP Lake Caliraya, the target ship, which was made in China but decommissioned by the Philippine navy in 2020 due to mechanical and electrical issues, according to Philippine military officials.

Philippine military officials said the maneuvers would bolster the country’s coastal defense and disaster-response capabilities and claimed they were not aimed at any country. China has opposed military drills involving U.S. forces in the region as well as increasing U.S. military deployments, which it warned would ratchet up tensions and hamper regional stability and peace.

Washington and Beijing have been on a collision course over China’s increasingly assertive actions to defend its vast territorial claims in the South China Sea, and Beijing’s stated goal of annexing Taiwan, by force if necessary.

In February last year, Marcos approved a wider U.S. military presence in the Philippines by allowing rotating groups of American military forces to stay in four more Philippine military camps. That was a sharp turnaround from his predecessor Rodrigo Duterte, who feared that a larger American military footprint could antagonize Beijing.

China strongly opposed the move, which would allow U.S. forces to establish staging grounds and surveillance posts in the northern Philippines across the sea from Taiwan, and in western Philippine provinces facing the South China Sea.

China has warned that a deepening security alliance between Washington and Manila and their ongoing military drills should not harm its security and territorial interests or interfere in the territorial disputes. The Philippines countered that it has the right to defend its sovereignty and territorial interests.

“An alliance is very important to show China that you may have all the ships that you have, but we have a lot of firepower to sink all of them,” Mr. Romualdez said