Taiwan dispatched naval, land and air forces on Wednesday after China launched a live-fire exercise zone just 40 nautical miles off of Taiwan’s coast.
Taiwan’s defense ministry says it only became aware of the exercise when local Taiwanese vessels were warned to stay out of the area after the drills had begun. The drills are centered off the coast of the Taiwan port city of Kaohsiung. Taiwanese officials say China “blatantly violated international norms” by unilaterally designating the drill zone.
“This move not only poses a high risk to the navigation safety of international flights and ships at sea, but is also a blatant provocation to regional security and stability,” the defense ministry said in a statement.
As part of the drill, Taiwan says it detected 32 Chinese military aircraft carrying out joint exercises with warships. Chinese officials have so far not acknowledged Taiwan’s complaints.
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The drills around Taiwan are only the latest example of Chinese aggression this month. The country’s military has also launched live-fire drills off the coast of Vietnam as well as between New Zealand and Australia, forcing commercial flights between the two countries to be diverted.
Wednesday’s exercise came just days after the Chinese Communist Party’s fourth-ranked leader, Wang Huning, called for greater “reunification” efforts. China has long maintained that Taiwan is a rebel territory belonging to Beijing.
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China must “firmly grasp the right to dominate and take the initiative in cross-strait relations, and unswervingly push forward the cause of reunification of the motherland,” Huning said, according to a translation by Chinese state media.
Chinese President Xi Jinping has repeatedly said in recent years that he is willing to take over Taiwan by force.
China’s drills come one day after Taiwan’s coast guard (CGA) detained the Chinese crew of a Togolese-registered vessel suspected of severing an undersea fiber optic cable connecting the islands of Taiwan and Penghu on Tuesday.
The CGA says the vessel, the Hong Tai 168, had been loitering within roughly 925 meters of the cable since 7 p.m. local time on Feb. 22. A coast guard vessel was dispatched to the ship at 2:30 a.m. on Tuesday, demanding that the vessel leave the area, Taiwan’s state-owned media said.
Coast guard officials received confirmation that the Taiwan-Penghu No. 3 undersea cable had been cut at 3 a.m. Tuesday, and they began efforts to detain the ship’s Chinese crew. All eight crew members were Chinese nationals, according to the coast guard.
Taiwan split from mainland China in 1949, when pro-democratic forces fled to the island after losing a civil war to Mao Zedong’s Chinese Communist Party.
