Foreign
IN spite of its initial announcement that Chinese maneuvers around Taiwan would end on Sunday, the People’s Liberation Army continued its large-scale sea and air drills on Monday.
The triggering fears that they exercised might herald the beginning of a new normal.
China’s state television reported that the exercises were focusing on anti-submarine and sea assault operations.
In announcing the maneuvers to the north, south-west and east of the self-ruled island last Tuesday, China had originally promised their conclusion on Sunday.
No new formal end date has been announced.
In fact, some commentators on Chinese media expressed the view that military exercises could become routine.
Defence Ministry spokesman Wu Qian on Monday, said the drills were necessary warnings to the United States and Taiwan.
He described them as an “entirely reasonable and appropriate’’ response to their recent provocations.
He said the tensions were deliberately stoked by Washington, with U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi travelling to Taipei last week in the face of fierce opposition from Beijing.
The Chinese leadership rejected official contact by other countries with Taipei because it regarded the island as part of the mainland.
Taiwan, on the other hand, has long seen itself as an independent.
Later, Taiwan’s Ministry of National Defence confirmed that China’s military operations were continuing and said the Taiwanese military was responding appropriately.
Taiwanese Lit.-Gen. Yeh Kuo-hui said that Chinese jet fighters crossing the median line of the Taiwan Strait during the past four days had been given immediate radio warnings.
That all Chinese warplanes were being closely monitored, in comments during a briefing.
The ministry also refuted disinformation that was spreading online, including reporting by Chinese state media about the intrusion of Chinese navy warships into Taiwan’s territorial waters.
At least 272 fake news items concerning China’s military drills were detected between Aug. 1 to 8, the ministry said.
Furthermore, several official Taiwanese websites have faced cyberattacks, including the ministry’s website which suffered a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack, which attempts to make an online service unavailable to users.
Taiwan is also preparing to carry out a scheduled live-fire artillery exercise called Tien Lei Drill, part of the ongoing annual Han Kuang exercises, on Tuesday and Thursday in southern Taiwan.
The step came after the Chinese military practised not only a naval and air blockade but also amphibious landing capabilities to launch beach assaults on Taiwan in recent days.
The Ministry of National Defence said that as of 5 p.m. (0900 GMT) on Monday, 13 Chinese navy warships and 39 warplanes were detected in Taiwan’s surrounding region over the course of the day.
Among them, 21 Chinese jet fighters crossed the median line of the Taiwan Strait.
Taiwan’s armed forces have monitored the situation and responded to these activities with aircraft in CAP (Combat Air Patrol), naval vessels, and land-based missile systems, the ministry said.
A Chinese drone was also spotted again on Sunday evening over the outlying Taiwanese island of Kinmen, which is only a few kilometres from the Chinese coast, the ministry reported.
Until recently, there had been no Chinese overflight of the island since the 1950s.
Other Chinese maneuvers are also planned this week in other waters, including in the north in the Bohai Gulf and the Yellow Sea, and in the south in the South China Sea off the coast of Guangdong Province.(dpa/NAN)
C.E
Tags: China
