Beijing’s military maneuvers off Taiwan have been “successfully completed”, the Chinese military said on Monday (April 10). For three days, the island was the target of a total encirclement by Beijing, which claims this island state of 23 million inhabitants as a province of China, which it has not yet managed to reunite with the rest of its territory since the end of the Chinese Civil War in 1949.
From April 8 to 10, the Chinese military command “successfully completed various tasks” of military readiness “around the island of Taiwan with the ‘Joint Sword’ exercise”. It has “extensively tested its ‘joint’ combat capability ‘in real world conditions’,” the military said in a social media post.
China “deliberately uses military exercises to undermine peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait,” the Foreign Ministry said, adding that Taipei would maintain close ties with the United States “to jointly deter ‘authoritarian expansion’. On the last day of the maneuvers, Taiwan claims to have detected 12 Chinese warships and 91 planes, one ship and 21 planes more than the day before.
These maneuvers mobilized about ten warships and up to about 70 aircraft. On Sunday, fighter jets and warships simulated targeted bombardments against the island.
This operation “focuses on the ability to take control of the sea, airspace and information […] in order to create deterrence and total encirclement” of Taiwan, said Chinese state television. . According to military expert Song Zhongping, these exercises, which have an “operational” dimension, are intended to demonstrate that the Chinese military will be ready, “if the provocations intensify”, to “settle once and for all the question of Taiwan”.
Tensions between Beijing and Taipei had redoubled in intensity after a meeting, Wednesday, in the United States, of its president, Tsai Ing-wen, and the third figure of the American state. The moves “serve as serious warnings against collusion between separatist forces seeking ‘Taiwan independence’ and outside forces, as well as their provocative activities,” a Chinese military spokesman Shi said in a statement. Yi.
Unlike Washington and Paris, who respectively called for “restraint” and to be careful not to “enter into a block-to-block logic”, Moscow, for its part, lent its full support to these military maneuvers. , believing that Beijing was the victim of “provocations” by the United States which supports the island. “China has the sovereign right to react to these provocative actions, including by conducting maneuvers,” said Dmitry Peskov, spokesman for the Russian presidency.
The United States responded by sending the American destroyer USS Milius on Monday to conduct a “freedom of navigation operation” in an area of the South China Sea claimed by Beijing. An “intrusion” immediately denounced by China. Japan said it had launched fighter jets in recent days in response to those taking off and landing from the aircraft carrier Shandong.