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https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/china-boasts-of-ability-to-blockade-taiwan-as-military-exercises-continue/ar-AA10lbDd
China Boasts of Ability to Blockade Taiwan as Military Exercises Continue
China touted its military exercises around Taiwan as proof of its ability to blockade the self-ruled island in the event of a war, as the operations in response to a visit by U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi entered a second day.
At least 68 Chinese warplanes and 13 warships carried out maneuvers off Taiwan’s coast on Friday, Taiwan’s Ministry of National Defense said. During the operation, some of the aircraft and ships sent by China’s military crossed the median line in the Taiwan Strait, a notional boundary that Taipei says demarcates areas of de facto control, the ministry said.
The flurry of military sorties Beijing flew Friday—setting a record of such activity since Taiwan’s military began disclosing the data in September 2020—came after China encircled Taiwan with rocket and ballistic-missile fire a day earlier. The four-day exercises have been described as unprecedented by Chinese military experts and state media. U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, in Cambodia for a regional meeting, said they were a “significant escalation.”
Chinese forces carried out live firing in six delineated zones facing Taiwan’s military bases and its biggest commercial ports, allowing China’s military, the People’s Liberation Army, to form a blockade around the island for the first time, a breakthrough highlighted by state media outlets in Beijing. The areas overlap with what Taiwan claims as its territorial waters.
Maj. Gen. Meng Xiangqing, a professor at the People’s Liberation Army National Defense University, told China’s state broadcaster that the PLA launched missiles over the main island of Taiwan on Thursday, the first time the military has done so. Gen. Meng didn’t specify how many were fired, but said they passed over an area where Taiwan stations Patriot antimissile batteries, and which is monitored by the U.S. Navy. Taiwan said Beijing fired 11 ballistic missiles near the island.
The exercises simulated an actual war, Gen. Meng said, with China demonstrating the precision and mobility of weaponry that can now blanket the whole island.
“We can say that we have the ability to switch the exercise into a real war at any point,” he said.
It was also the first occasion that Chinese aircraft carriers joined an exercise in a group formation, Gen. Meng said. Two of China’s carriers, the Liaoning and the Shandong, were training together earlier this week before Mrs. Pelosi’s arrival in Taiwan, which coincided with the 95th anniversary of the founding of the PLA. The whereabouts of the carriers couldn’t be determined.
The White House, meanwhile, announced that the USS Ronald Reagan carrier and its accompanying ships would remain in the region to monitor the situation. The White House also summoned Chinese ambassador Qin Gang.
“We made clear to the ambassador that Beijing’s actions are of concern to Taiwan, to us, and to our partners around the world,” White House spokesman John Kirby said in a statement Friday.
Related video: Taiwan ends military drills amid China tension
On Thursday afternoon, the PLA’s Eastern Theater Command said it had successfully completed all live-fire operations in the waters off the east of Taiwan, lifting traffic controls in the area. By late Friday, it said the second day of drills had been carried out as planned. The state broadcaster aired footage showing flying jet fighters and cruising warships but with no images of live fire included.
More than 200 vessels that regularly navigate the waters around Taiwan have moved out from the six zones. Only a handful of vessels were still sailing in those zones on Friday, from an average 240 a day over the past week, Lloyd’s List Intelligence data show. The Taiwan Strait is a major shipping route, with about half of the global container fleet and 90% of the world’s largest ships by tonnage crossing the waterway last year.
Kaohsiung and Keelung, Taiwan’s two biggest ports, are still open for business, but ship arrivals have fallen by a quarter over the past two days, the data show.
While the general mood in Taiwan remained calm after the end of Thursday’s exercises, Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen called on Beijing to act with reason and restraint.
“Taiwan will not escalate conflict, but we will resolutely defend our sovereignty, our security and our democracy,” she said in a video released Thursday.
On Friday, a prominent figure in Taiwan’s world-leading semiconductor industry announced a donation equivalent to $100 million to promote the island’s civil defense and combat China’s psychological warfare.
Robert Tsao, founder of United Microelectronics Corp., or UMC, said that there were people in Taiwan who wouldn’t be compromised by the lure of Beijing’s economic might or intimidated by its military strength. He urged more people to come to the island’s defense.
UMC, a Taiwanese chip maker that also operates two fabrication plants in China, referred a request for comment to Mr. Tsao himself, without elaborating further. Mr. Tsao remains honorary chairman of UMC after his retirement and isn’t involved with the company’s day-to-day operations.
On Friday afternoon, China said that it was suspending climate-change talks with the U.S. and scrapping some military exchanges in response to Mrs. Pelosi’s visit. The countermeasures include the cancellation of calls between military leaders and two security meetings, and the suspension of cooperation in fighting crime. It also announced sanctions against Mrs. Pelosi and her immediate family.
Visiting Japan on the last leg of her Asia tour, Mrs. Pelosi said Beijing probably saw her visit as an opportunity to conduct the exercises and said the U.S. would continue engaging with Taiwan despite criticism from China.
“We will not allow them to isolate Taiwan,” she said at a news conference in Tokyo on Friday.
By visiting Taiwan, Mrs. Pelosi had defied repeated warnings from Beijing. The U.S. Air Force plane carrying her delegation from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia to Taipei took a three-hour detour, flying over Indonesia and the Philippines before landing in Taipei.
Gen. Meng, the Chinese military expert, told China’s state broadcaster that the circuitous route was a response to the deterrent effect created by China’s deployment around Taiwan.
He said the PLA had followed Mrs. Pelosi’s flight to Taiwan, keeping it under surveillance during the journey. He didn’t say whether Chinese warplanes had physically shadowed her plane.
Write to Wenxin Fan at Wenxin.Fan@wsj.com and Joyu Wang at joyu.wang@wsj.com
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