China will hold new drills in Taiwan despite US condemnation

Despite firm statements of condemnation from the United States, Japan and the European Union, China on Friday looked to advance its largest-ever military drills around Taiwan.

Beijing’s decision to launch ballistic missiles and deploy warplanes around Taiwan led Washington to criticize a gross overreaction to US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to the self-governing, democratic island.

The speaker of the US House of Representatives was the highest profile US official to go to Taiwan in years, defying strong threats from Beijing, which regards the self-governing island as its territory.

In retaliation, China on Thursday launched a series of drills in multiple zones around Taiwan, spanning some of the world’s busiest shipping lanes and at some points just 20 kilometers (12 miles) from the island’s coast.

The drills included a “conventional missile attack” in waters east of Taiwan, the Chinese military said. Beijing has announced they will continue until Sunday noon.

Beijing’s state-run Xinhua News Agency reported that the Chinese army flew “more than 100 warplanes, including fighters and bombers” and “over 10 destroyers and frigates” during the exercises.

State broadcaster CCTV reported that Chinese missiles had flown over Taiwan.

Taiwan said the Chinese military had fired 11 Dongfeng-class ballistic missiles “in multiple batches,” while Japan claimed that of the nine missiles it detected, four “were believed to have passed over Taiwan’s main island.”

However, Taiwan has said it will not confirm the missiles’ flight paths.

“Considering that the main goal of the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) rocket launch is to intimidate us, and in order to protect the military’s intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance capabilities, we will not release any information like its flight,” das said Department of Defense in a statement.

China has defended the drills as just countermeasures to provocations by the United States and its allies in Taiwan, which China regards as its own territory and has vowed to repeat.

But the exercises have sparked outrage in the United States and other democracies.

“China has chosen to overreact and use the Speaker’s visit as an excuse to ramp up provocative military activity in and around the Taiwan Strait,” White House spokesman John Kirby told reporters.

“The temperature is quite high,” but tensions “can be deflated very easily just by getting the Chinese to stop these very aggressive military exercises,” he added.

Japan has filed a formal diplomatic complaint against Beijing over the drills, with five of the missiles believed to have landed in its exclusive economic zone.

And Prime Minister Fumio Kishida on Friday called the exercises a “serious problem affecting our national security and the security of our citizens” and called for an “immediate cancellation of the military exercises”.

During the final leg of her Asia tour, Pelosi said in Tokyo on Friday that Washington will “not allow” China to isolate Taiwan.

“We have said from the beginning that our representation here is not about changing the status quo here in Asia or the status quo in Taiwan,” she added.

But Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said on the sidelines of a regional summit in Phnom Penh on Thursday that the US’ “blatant provocation” had set an “outrageous precedent”.

“If it is not corrected and fought, will there still be the principle of non-interference in internal affairs? Is international law still respected?” he said, according to Xinhua.

The maneuvers are taking place along some of the world’s busiest shipping routes, which serve to ship vital semiconductors and electronic equipment, manufactured in East Asian factory centers, to global markets.

Taiwan’s Maritime and Port Bureau has warned ships to avoid the areas used for Chinese drills.

Taiwan’s cabinet also said the drills would disrupt 18 international routes that pass through its Flight Information Region (FIR).

Several international airlines have told AFP that they will be diverting flights out of the airspace around the island of Taiwan.

“China’s planned live-fire exercises are taking place in an incredibly busy waterway,” Nick Marro, the Economist Intelligence Unit’s senior analyst for global trade, wrote in a note.

“The closure of these transport routes — even temporarily — has consequences not only for Taiwan, but also for trade flows linked to Japan and South Korea.”

But markets in Taipei appeared to shake off tensions, with the Taiwan Taiex Shipping and Transportation Index, which tracks major shipping and airline stocks, gaining 2.3 percent early Friday.

And analysts largely agree that for all its aggressive stance, Beijing doesn’t want an active military conflict against the United States and its allies over Taiwan — yet.

“The last thing Xi wants is an accidental war,” Titus Chen, associate professor of political science at Taiwan’s National Sun Yat-Sen University, told AFP.