China began large-scale military exercises around Taiwan and its peripheral islands on Monday, in a “warning” against the territory’s independence, days after Taipei reiterated its sovereignty.
The Chinese Defense Ministry said the exercises are a response to statements by Taiwanese leader William Lai, who recently reiterated that the People’s Republic of China “has no right to represent Taiwan.” Taipei considered the exercises a provocation and said its forces were prepared to react.
Chinese People’s Liberation Army Eastern Theater Command spokesman Captain Li Xi said the navy, army air force and missile corps were all mobilized for the exercises.
“It is an important warning to those who support Taiwan’s independence and a sign of our determination to safeguard our sovereignty,” Li said in a statement published by Beijing’s official press.
The maneuvers, designated Joint Sword-2024B, involve land, sea and air forces, and are similar to those carried out by China last May, also in the Taiwan Strait and around the autonomous island.
Li said the exercises include bringing ships and planes closer to the island from various directions, as well as attacks carried out jointly by different forces, with the aim of testing actual combat readiness.
Taiwan was a Japanese colony before being unified with China at the end of World War II. The two territories have lived separately since Chiang Kai-shek’s nationalists fled to the island in 1949, while Mao Zedong’s communists took power on the Chinese mainland at the end of the civil war.
Lai took office in May, continuing an eight-year rule by the Democratic Progressive Party, which rejects China’s demand to recognize Taiwan as a Chinese province.
“The Republic of China [nome oficial de Taiwan] took root in Taiwan, Penghu, Kinmen and Matsu. The Republic of China and the People’s Republic of China are not subordinate to each other,” Lai said to applause during a speech delivered in front of Taipei’s presidential palace during National Day celebrations last week.
China regularly claims that Taiwan’s independence is a “dead end” and that annexation by Beijing is a historical inevitability.
