China sends the largest naval squadron in decades to the region, and the threat level is grave, Taiwan claims.

News Mania Desk / Piyal Chatterjee / 10th December 2024

China is deploying its largest navy fleet in area waters in nearly three decades, posing a more serious danger to Taiwan than prior Chinese war games, the Taiwanese defense ministry warned Tuesday.  Sun Li-fang, a defense ministry spokesperson in Taipei, said the current Chinese naval deployment in an area stretching from the southern Japanese islands to the South China Sea was the largest since China held war games around Taiwan in preparation for the 1996 Taiwanese presidential election.

China’s military has yet to comment and has not acknowledged that it is conducting any exercises.  China, which regards democratically ruled Taiwan as its own territory due to the island’s rejection, was anticipated to conduct drills to indicate its displeasure with President Lai Ching-te’s Pacific visit, which culminated on Friday with stops in Hawaii and the US territory of Guam.

Taiwan’s military issued an alarm on Monday, claiming China had restricted airspace and deployed naval and coast guard boats.Senior ministry intelligence officer Hsieh Jih-sheng told the same press briefing that there have been no live fire drills in China’s seven “reserved” air space zones, two of which are in the Taiwan Strait.

According to a Taiwan security source, the number of Chinese navy and coast guard ships in the region has stayed at 90, which is “very alarming,” and China is targeting other countries in the region, not only Taiwan.  China’s deployment in the First Island Chain, which extends from Japan to Taiwan, the Philippines, and Borneo, encircling China’s coastal seas, is intended to deter foreign forces from intruding, according to Hsieh.

The ministry stated that China’s navy is constructing two “walls” in the Pacific, one at the eastern end of Taiwan’s Air Defence Identification Zone and the other further out in the Pacific.  “They are sending a very simple message with these two walls: trying to make the Taiwan Strait an internal sea” according to Hsieh.  Earlier on Tuesday, the defense ministry claimed it had identified 47 military aircraft operating over the island in the previous 24 hours, as well as 12 naval vessels and nine “official” ships, which refer to vessels from nominally civilian organizations such as the coast guard.

According to a map published by the ministry in its daily morning bulletin on Chinese actions, 26 of the aircraft flew north of Taiwan off the coast of China’s Zhejiang province, six in the Taiwan Strait, and 15 to the island’s southwest.  According to a senior Taiwanese security source, the Chinese aircraft simulated attacks on foreign navy ships and practised driving away military and civilian aircraft as part of a “blockade exercise”.
Lai and his government oppose Beijing’s sovereignty claims, claiming that only Taiwanese citizens can determine their own future.China claims the Taiwan issue is the “core of its core interests” and a red line that the US should not cross.
China conducted two rounds of large war drills.