(TibetanReview.net, May23’24) — Three days after Mr Lai Ching-te took office as the President of Taiwan, China has, at 7:45 am on May 23, launched two days of joint military drills surrounding the self-ruled island. Li Xi, spokesperson for the Eastern Theatre Command of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), has emphasized that the exercises would serve as a “strong punishment” against the separatist acts of the “Taiwan independence” forces and a “stern warning” to interference and provocation by external forces.
The launch of the drills came in the wake of China’s issuance of a flurry of criticisms of Lai, who belongs to the Democratic Progressive Party, for his inauguration address, accusing him of taking a more radical “Taiwan independence” stance, as reported by China’s official Xinhua news agency May 22, citing Chen Binhua, a spokesperson for the State Council Taiwan Affairs Office.
Chen has accused Lai of being “a traitor to mainstream public opinion on the island and a disruptor of peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait.”
It is clear that from the very beginning of his tenure, Lai cannot help but to expose his true colours as an advocate for “Taiwan independence” with an extremely arrogant attitude and more radical views, Chen has further said.
The PLA’s Eastern Theatre Command declared that the exercise would take place in the Taiwan Strait, the north, south and east of Taiwan Island, as well as areas around the islands of Kinmen, Matsu, Wuqiu, and Dongyin, noted China’s official chinadaily.cn May 23. The PLA also released a map of the intended exercise area.
Li has said the drills, code-named Joint Sword-2024A, will involve military services including the army, navy, air force and rocket force of the theatre command.
He has said the focus of the exercises was on practicing joint maritime and aerial combat readiness patrols, joint seizure of comprehensive battlefield control, and joint precision strikes of key targets.
He has added that the drills involve the patrol of vessels and planes closing in on areas around the island of Taiwan and integrated operations inside and outside the island chain to test the joint real combat capabilities of theatre command forces.
Designed to surround the island of Taiwan from both the east and the west, the exercises display the PLA’s strike capability across all directions of the island without any blind spots, forming a situation where the island is pinned down from both sides, China’s official globaltimes.cn May 23 cited “experts” as saying.
The report noted that since then-US house speaker Nancy Pelosi’s provocative visit to the island of Taiwan in Aug 2022, the PLA had organized several rounds of large-scale exercises as countermeasures to provocations by “Taiwan independence” secessionists and their collusions with external forces, in addition to holding regular patrols and training exercises in the region.
The report cited Tong Zhen, a research fellow at the Academy of Military Sciences of the PLA, as saying the latest exercises feature an integrated plan covering the main island of Taiwan and its outlying islands. For the main island of Taiwan, combat alert patrols will surround the island, with warships and warplanes closing in on multiple locations only steps away from its coastlines, effectively pressuring the island’s so-called space for military defence, Tong has said.
He has noted that this is the first time the mainland’s coast guard vessels have entered waters around Wuqiu and Dongyin islands.
Designed to serve as strong deterrence and warning, the exercise destroyed the notion of so-called restricted waters imposed by the island of Taiwan, Tong has said.
The report cited “experts” as saying the exercises have showed the features of employing the acts of destroying, trapping and blocking in one move.
The report cited observers as noting the codename of the exercise, Joint Sword-2024A, indicates that there might be more exercises to come with code-names Joint Sword-2024B and Joint Sword-2024C should “Taiwan independence” secessionists and external interference forces continue to provoke.
Taiwan has responded by scrambling jets and putting missile, naval and land units on alert.
Self-ruled Taiwan is separated by a narrow 180-kilometer (110-mile) strait from China, which has said it would never renounce the use of force to bring it under its control.