As Beijing heightens tensions over Nancy Pelosi’s visit, China will surround Taiwan and essentially blockade the island with enormous military exercises, posing the greatest danger to its independence in decades.
Live-fire drills in and around the Taiwan Strait began on Tuesday and will continue through today as part of six days of military training as authoritarian China tries to frighten its democratic neighbor and persuade the US to stop supporting the self-governing island.
Then, starting on Thursday and lasting until Sunday, four more days of drills will be conducted in six different places around the nation, three of which would enter its territorial seas, in what Taipei has dubbed a grave violation of international standards.
Experts believe Beijing is practicing its potential to cut off the island from the outside world in the case of a war by imposing what amounts to a blockade on shipping and air travel in specific regions.
Pelosi, who on Tuesday visited Taiwan for the first time as a top official since 1997, when China last ratcheted up tensions, refused to back down, adamantly informing Beijing that Washington “would not abandon its commitment” to Taipei.
During a meeting with Taiwan’s President Tsai Ing-wen, she made a brief speech in which she stated that “now the world confronts a decision between democracy and despotism.”
‘America’s determination to preserve democracy, here in Taiwan and around the world, remains ironclad.’
Taiwan views itself as an independent nation separate from mainland China, but Beijing views it as a breakaway province that it has vowed to ‘reunify’.
The island is home to the remnants of the Nationalist Party which fought against, and lost, a war to China’s Communist Party after the Second World War.
When the United States established diplomatic ties with Beijing in 1979, it also recognized that Taiwan is a part of the “one China” and that the Communists are the country’s rightful leaders.
But soon after, Congress approved a law requiring the US to provide Taiwan with weapons so that it can defend itself in the event of an invasion.
Since then, there has been a tenuous cease-fire throughout the island, but tensions have risen since since President Xi Jinping declared in 2019 that he has the right to use force to “reunify” Taiwan if it is considered necessary.
Due to Pelosi’s visit, China has increased tensions with military exercises much beyond the most recent Taiwan Strait conflict.
On that occasion, China also held military drills around the strait – but much further from the island than its exercises planned for this week.
None of the drills in ’96 crossed Taiwan’s territorial waters, and none took place on the eastern side of the island.
This time, three of the planned zones intrude into Taiwan’s waters and three are positioned to the island’s east – effectively cutting it off from the Pacific.
Taiwan officials said the live fire drills violate United Nations rules, invade Taiwan’s territorial space and are a direct challenge to free air and sea navigation.
China’s Eastern Theatre Command said a multi-force exercise involving the Navy, Air Force, Rocket Force, Strategic Support Force and Joint Logistics Support Force, took place in the air and sea to the north, southwest and southeast of Taiwan on Wednesday.
Chinese military practiced operations including seal and control, assault at sea and strike on land.
Analysts spoken to by Reuters say it remains unclear if China will fire cruise or ballistic missiles directly over the island, or attempt a blockade for the first time.
Song Zhongping, a Hong Kong-based military commentator, said it appeared the People’s Liberation Army wanted to practise blockading the island if it had to in a later war.
‘The goal of these exercises, to put it bluntly, is to prepare for the military fight with Taiwan.’
Unusually, the drills were announced with a locator map circulated by the official Xinhua news agency – a factor that for some analysts and scholars shows the need to play to both domestic and foreign audiences.
‘We can see China’s ambition: to make the Taiwan Strait non-international waters, as well as making the entire area west of the first island chain in the western pacific its sphere of influence,’ said a Taiwanese official familiar with its security planning.
If China got what it wanted, the official said, the impact would ‘be fatal for the safety and stability of regional countries, as well as for the regional economy.’
Singapore-based security scholar Collin Koh said the Pelosi visit had trapped China between having to show a resolute and sweeping response while avoiding a full-blown conflict.
‘Even if they want to avoid that outcome, there are still significant possibilities for an accidental escalation,’ said Koh, of the of the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies.
Chinese-produced exercise maps demonstrate that they go well beyond the missile launches that occurred in the Taiwan Strait in 1996 as part of Beijing’s protests against the island’s first direct presidential election, which later led to the Third Taiwan Strait Crisis.
Significantly, the proposed practice zones split Taiwan’s claimed 12 nautical mile territorial seas in the north, east, and south. Taiwanese authorities allege that this violates international law and amounts to a blockade of their country’s sea and airspace.
In order to successfully resolve the situation, the United States navy sent two aircraft carriers close to the Taiwan Straits in 1996. However, given China’s military development since then, notably its greatly improved missile arsenal, many observers believe that this maneuver is more difficult now.
The USS Ronald Reagan carrier and four additional warships, including a guided missile cruiser, were deployed by the 7th Fleet in the Philippine Sea east of Taiwan as part of a “regular deployment,” a U.S. Navy official confirmed to Reuters on Tuesday.
Questions from Reuters on the Chinese drills on Wednesday were not immediately answered by the Indo-Pacific Command in Hawaii.
Advanced U.S. and Taiwanese surveillance aircraft, according to Koh, would use the drills as a chance to eavesdrop on Chinese military communications and equipment, potentially increasing hazards if Chinese aircraft retaliated.