China has fielded its largest regional maritime deployment in decades, Taiwan\u2019s Defense Ministry said Tuesday, as it monitors what it says is a surge of Chinese military activities in the Taiwan Strait and Western Pacific. <\/p>\n
Taiwan has been on high alert since Monday as it braced for expected military drills after President Lai Ching-te sparked Beijing\u2019s ire by making unofficial stops in Hawaii and the US territory of Guam earlier this month. <\/p>\n
Taiwan on Monday said multiple formations of Chinese naval and coast guard vessels were moving in regional waters and around the Taiwan Strait. Beijing has not announced military drills or acknowledged the large-scale deployment cited by Taipei. <\/strong> <\/p>\n China\u2019s ruling Communist Party claims the self-governing democracy of Taiwan as its own territory, despite never having controlled it, and has not ruled out taking the island by force. It views unofficial interactions between Washington and Taipei as a violation of its sovereignty. Taiwan\u2019s leadership rejects China\u2019s territorial claims over it. <\/p>\n An \u201castonishing\u201d number of Chinese vessels have been deployed at a scale that \u201ccould block external forces,\u201d Lt. Gen. Hsieh Jih-Sheng, deputy chief of the General Staff for Intelligence, said at a Taiwan Defense Ministry briefing Tuesday. <\/p>\n The People\u2019s Liberation Army (PLA) naval deployment was not only targeting Taiwan, Hsieh said, adding that the geographic spread stretched into waters past the first island chain. The strategically significant chain of islands encompasses Japan, Taiwan, parts of the Philippines and Indonesia, and as long been a key plank in the US maintaining its position as the dominant power in the Pacific. <\/p>\n \u201cThe PLA\u2019s recent activities not only exerted military pressure on Taiwan. Its naval forces, specifically, have significantly raised its posture around Taiwan and the Western Pacific,\u201d Hsieh said. <\/p>\n China\u2019s ability to block outside forces from entering the first island chain could pose a survival threat to Taiwan in the event of a Chinese invasion, potentially cutting off naval access by outside forces seeking to aid the island. <\/p>\n The maritime deployment was the largest since China began holding large-scale war games around Taiwan in the mid-1990s, according to the ministry. <\/p>\n Taiwan authorities also reported a significant increase in PLA aircraft operating around the island, detecting 47 such jets in the 24 hours before 6 a.m. Tuesday. <\/p>\n In a statement Monday, Taiwan authorities said the PLA had designated seven zones of reserved airspace to the east of its coastal Zhejiang and Fujian provinces. <\/p>\n No live-fire exercises had yet taken place in the zones which lie to the north and northwest of Taiwan respectively, the ministry said in its Tuesday briefing. <\/p>\n The Chinese military movement comes days after Lai made unofficial stops in Hawaii and Guam during a weeklong South Pacific tour, which wrapped Friday. <\/p>\n The visit was Lai\u2019s first to the United States since becoming president in May. The leader, who has long faced Beijing\u2019s wrath for championing Taiwan\u2019s sovereignty, used his travel to tout solidarity with likeminded democracies. <\/p>\n Chinese authorities voiced firm opposition to Lai\u2019s trip, referring to him as a \u201cseparatist.\u201d His travel came after the US approved new arms sales to Taiwan, which prompted China to vow \u201cstrong countermeasures.\u201d <\/p>\n Military drills have increasingly become one of Beijing\u2019s go-to tools to voice dissatisfaction and visits by US or Taiwanese officials to each other\u2019s soil have in the past sparked significant war games from China. <\/p>\n In May, days after Lai\u2019s inauguration, China launched two days of large-scale military drills surrounding Taiwan in what it called \u201cpunishment\u201d for so-called \u201cseparatist acts.\u201d It called those drills \u201cJoint Sword-2024A.\u201d <\/p>\n China then conducted \u201cJoint-Sword-2024B\u201d drills in October, after Lai said during a National Day address that the island was \u201cnot subordinate\u201d to China. <\/p>\n When asked about the military movements during a regular briefing Tuesday, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning declined to comment directly but said, \u201cthe Taiwan issue is China\u2019s internal affair, and China will firmly defend its national sovereignty.\u201d <\/p>\n This story has been updated with additional information.<\/em> <\/p>\n<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" China has fielded its largest regional maritime deployment in decades, Taiwan\u2019s Defense Ministry said Tuesday,…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":11140,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11139","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailywashingtoninsider.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11139","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailywashingtoninsider.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailywashingtoninsider.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailywashingtoninsider.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailywashingtoninsider.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11139"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailywashingtoninsider.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11139\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailywashingtoninsider.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11140"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailywashingtoninsider.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11139"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailywashingtoninsider.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11139"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailywashingtoninsider.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11139"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}} Visit to US<\/h2>\n