Taiwan remained on high alert on Wednesday after China staged massive military drills around the island the previous day, keeping its emergency maritime response centre running as it monitored Chinese naval manoeuvres, the coast guard said. The exercises named “Justice Mission 2025” saw China fire dozens of rockets towards Taiwan and deploy a large number of warships and aircraft near the island, in a show of force that drew concern \u2060from allies in the region and the west. Beijing announced late on Wednesday the completion of the drills, saying its military would remain on high alert and continue to strengthen their combat-readiness. In reply, Taiwan’s defence ministry said \u200cthat as there were still a significant \u2060number of Chinese planes and vessels in its response area, its armed forces would maintain an “appropriate contingency mechanism”. It did not elaborate. “The Chinese Communist Party’s aggressive and militaristic provocations endanger regional securit
y and stability, and have been condemned by democratic allies in the international community,” it said in a statement. China’s President Xi Jinping struck \u200da familiar tone on Taiwan in his New Year address shortly after Beijing’s announcement, repeating last year’s warning to what it regards as forces seeking Taiwan’s independence. “Compatriots on both sides of the Taiwan Strait are bound by blood ties thicker than water, and the historical trend toward national reunification is unstoppable,” he said in a speech televised by state broadcaster CCTV. China claims democratically governed Taiwan as its own territory, and it \u2060has not ruled out using force to take it under Chinese control. Taiwan, which rejects China’s claims, condemned the latest drills as a threat to regional security and a blatant provocation. Chinese ships were moving away from Taiwan by Tuesday night, according to Kuan Bi-ling, head of Taiwan’s Ocean Affairs Council. “The maritime situation has
calmed down, with ships and vessels gradually departing,” she said in a post on Facebook late on Tuesday. A Taiwan coast guard official told Reuters that all 11 Chinese coast guard ships had left waters near Taiwan \u200cand were continuing to move away. A Taiwan security official said emergency response centres for the military and coast guard remained active. There were more than 90 Chinese naval and coast guard vessels in the region, with many of them deployed in the South China Sea, near Taiwan and the East China Sea, two security officials in the region told Reuters earlier. The officials, who declined to be identified due to the sensitivity \u2060of the matter, said the size of China’s maritime deployment had steadily increased since early this week. China is in the middle of what has become a busy season for military exercises. Taiwan’s defence ministry on Wednesday said 77 Chinese military aircraft and 25 navy and coast guard vessels had been operating around the island in the past
24 hours. Among them, 35 military planes had crossed the Taiwan Strait median line that separates the two sides, it added. ‘STERN WARNING’ As the war games unfolded, United States Ambassador to China David Perdue posted on X a photo of himself with the \u2060ambassadors from countries in the Quad, a grouping that includes the U.S., Australia, Japan and India. In the post, he called the Quad a “force for good” working to maintain a free and open Indo-Pacific but gave no details about what the meeting discussed or when it took place. The U.S. State Department said Perdue regularly meets with diplomats and Chinese officials to advance the U.S. president’s agenda. “In line with these routine meetings he \u200dmet with Quad Ambassadors in Beijing on December 19”, a State Department spokesperson told Reuters. The drills, China’s most extensive war games by coverage area to date, forced Taiwan to cancel dozens of domestic flights and dispatch jets and warships for
monitoring. Soldiers ran rapid-response drills including putting up barricades at various locations. China regards the exercises as a “necessary and just measure” to safeguard national sovereignty and territorial integrity, its Taiwan Affairs Office spokesperson Zhang \u200cHan told reporters on Wednesday at a weekly briefing. They were “a \u200bstern warning against Taiwan independence separatist forces and external interference”, she \u200cadded. China’s state news agency Xinhua published an article summarising “three key takeaways” from the drills, which began 11 days after the United States announced a record $11.1 billion arms package for Taiwan. The simulated “encirclement” demonstrated the People’s Liberation Army’s ability to “press and contain separatist forces while denying access to external interference \u2013 an approach summarised as ‘sealing internally and blocking externally’,” the article said, citing Zhang Chi, a professor at the PLA National D<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Taiwan remained on high alert on Wednesday after China staged massive military drills around the island the previous day, keeping its emergency maritime response centre running as it monitored Chinese naval manoeuvres, the coast guard said. The exercises named “Justice Mission 2025” saw China fire dozens of rockets towards Taiwan and deploy a large number […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-35596","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\n