DM Monitoring
TAIPEI, Taiwan: China deployed fighter jets and warships to encircle Taiwan on Monday, in drills Beijing said were aimed at sending a “stern warning” to “separatist” forces on the self-ruled island.
Beijing has not ruled out using force to bring Taiwan under its control and Monday’s drills represent its fourth round of large-scale war games in the past two years.
The United States said China’s actions were “unwarranted” and risk “escalation” as it called on Beijing to act with restraint.
Taiwanese President Lai Ching-te, who took office in May, has been more outspoken than his predecessor Tsai Ing-wen in defending Taiwan’s sovereignty, angering Beijing, which calls him a “separatist”.
Taiwan condemned the latest exercises as “irrational and provocative” and said it has dispatched “appropriate forces” in response.
Outlying islands administered by Taipei were on “heightened alert” and “aircraft and ships will respond to enemy situations in accordance with the engagement rules”, Taiwan’s defence ministry said. Media journalists near the Hsinchu air force base, in the north of Taiwan, saw six fighter jets take off on Monday.
Beijing said its exercises served as a “stern warning to the separatist acts of ‘Taiwan Independence’ forces”.
The drills, dubbed Joint Sword-2024B, “test the joint operations capabilities of the theater command’s troops”, said Captain Li Xi, spokesman for the Chinese military’s Eastern Theater Command.
They are taking place in “areas to the north, south and east of Taiwan Island,” he said. The drills are “focusing on subjects of sea-air combat-readiness patrol, blockade on key ports and areas”, Li said. They also practised an “assault on maritime and ground targets”. Fighter jets and warships had been deployed, Chinese state media said.
China’s coast guard was also dispatched to conduct “inspections” around the island.
A diagram released by the coast guard showed four fleets encircling Taiwan and moving in an anticlockwise direction around the island.
The coast guard of the eastern province of Fujian — the closest area on the mainland to the self-ruled island — also said it was conducting “comprehensive law enforcement patrols” in waters near the Taiwan-controlled Matsu islands.
