C T Online Desk: China deployed dozens of fighter jets and warships around Taiwan on Sunday for a second day of large-scale military drills, in an angry show of force following a meeting between the island’s president and the US House speaker.
The move sparked condemnation from Taipei and calls for restraint from Washington, which said it was “monitoring Beijing’s actions closely”.
Dubbed “Joint Sword”, the three-day operation — which includes rehearsing an encirclement of Taiwan — will run until Monday, the People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) Eastern Theatre Command said.
“I am a little worried; I would be lying to you if I say that I am not,” said 73-year-old Donald Ho, who was exercising in a park on Sunday morning in Taipei, in the far north of the self-ruled island.
“I am still worried because if a war broke out both sides will suffer quite a lot,” he told AFP.
China’s war games saw planes, ships and personnel sent into “the maritime areas and air space of the Taiwan Strait, off the northern and southern coasts of the island, and to the island’s east”, the army said as it launched the exercises, engineered to flex Beijing’s military muscles in front of Taiwan and the world.
A report from state broadcaster CCTV said: “The task force will simultaneously organise patrols and advances around Taiwan island, shaping an all-round encirclement and deterrence posture.”
The patriotic write-up went on to detail the type of weaponry China was putting through its paces, including “long-range rocket artillery, naval destroyers, missile boats, air force fighters, bombers, jammers and refuellers”.
Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen immediately denounced the drills, which come after she met with US House Speaker Kevin McCarthy in California.
She pledged to work with “the US and other like-minded countries” in the face of “continued authoritarian expansionism”.
In Washington, a State Department spokesperson said the United States had “consistently urged restraint and no change to the status quo”, but noted it had ample resources to fulfil its security commitments in Asia.
The United States has been deliberately ambiguous on whether it would defend Taiwan militarily, although for decades it has sold weapons to Taipei to help ensure its self-defence.
