Taiwan’s military on Tuesday held a live-fire artillery drill to simulate defending the island against a Chinese invasion that Taipei accuses Beijing of planning. According to AFP, operations began in southern Pingtung County shortly after 0040 GMT, with flares and artillery fire. The drills ended around 01:30 GMT, said Lou Woei-jye, a spokesman for the Taiwan Army’s Eighth Corps.
Several hundred soldiers were deployed, as well as some 40 howitzers, the army said. A new exercise is scheduled for Thursday. Tuesday’s exercise attracted many onlookers.
China launched its largest-ever military, air and sea exercises around Taiwan last week in response to a visit by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, the highest-ranking US official to visit the autonomous island in decades.
Taiwan denounces Chinese missile launches
Beijing “used the exercises and its military roadmap to prepare for the invasion of Taiwan,” Taiwanese Foreign Minister Joseph Wu said at a news conference in Taipei on Tuesday after the Taiwanese drills.
“China’s real intention is to alter the status quo across the Taiwan Strait and throughout the region,” he added.
“It carries out large-scale military exercises and missile launches, as well as cyberattacks, disinformation campaigns, and economic coercion to weaken the morale of the people in Taiwan,” it continued.
China regards Taiwan, with a population of around 23 million, as one of its provinces, which has yet to successfully reunite the rest of its territory since the end of the Chinese Civil War in 1949.
Regular exercises on the island.
Lou Woei-jye assured Monday that the Taiwanese exercises were already scheduled and that they were not a response to ongoing Chinese maneuvers. The island, separated from mainland China by a 180-kilometre-wide strait, regularly hosts military exercises that simulate a Chinese invasion.
The Taiwan drills come after China on Monday extended its own joint sea and air drills around the island. They elicited a warning, as usual, from Beijing.
“Any attempt to oppose, by armed force, the course of history and reunification will inevitably meet with strong opposition from the entire Chinese people. It would be to overestimate their abilities, show recklessness and be doomed to failure,” said the spokesman for Chinese Foreign Relations, Wang Wenbin. during a press conference on Tuesday.
The Chinese military confirmed that the drills were continuing, involving air and sea units.
Pelosi’s visit ‘sends a clear message,’ says Taiwan
The Taiwanese military said it detected 45 Chinese planes and 10 ships operating in the Taiwan Strait on Tuesday, with 16 planes crossing the median line, an unofficial demarcation between China and Taiwan that Beijing does not recognize. Joseph Wu did not stop thanking his Western allies during his press conference, including Nancy Pelosi, for standing up to China.
“It also sends a clear message to the world that democracy will not give in to the intimidation of authoritarianism,” he said.
No Chinese warplanes or ships entered Taiwan’s territorial waters, within 12 nautical miles of land, during the Beijing drills, Taiwan said.
Beijing points the finger at Washington
However, ballistic missiles were fired at Taiwan’s capital Taipei during the exercises last week, according to Chinese state media. The scale and intensity of China’s drills, as well as its withdrawal from international climate and defense negotiations, have drawn outrage from the United States and other Western countries.
But Beijing on Monday defended its behavior, calling it “firm, forceful and appropriate” in the face of US provocation. “[Nous] let’s just issue a warning to those responsible” for this crisis, argued Wang Wenbin, vowing that China “will firmly break the Taiwanese authorities’ illusion of gaining independence through the United States.”
Washington, however, considered the risk of an escalation from Beijing low. “I’m not worried, but I’m worried that they’re worrying that much. But I don’t think they’re doing more than they’re doing,” President Joe Biden said Monday.
Source: BFM TV
