China sending largest naval fleet in decades to region, threat level severe: Taiwan
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Taiwanese fighter jets taking off at an air force base in Hsinchu, Taiwan, on Dec 10.
PHOTO: AFP
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TAIPEI – China is deploying its largest navy fleet in regional waters in nearly three decades, posing a threat to Taiwan that is more pronounced than previous Chinese war games, the Taiwanese Defence Ministry said on Dec 10.
Speaking in Taipei, Taiwanese Defence Ministry spokesman Sun Li-fang said the scale of the current Chinese naval deployment in an area running from the southern Japanese islands down into the South China Sea was the largest since China held war games around Taiwan ahead of the 1996 Taiwanese presidential elections.
China, which views democratically governed Taiwan as its own territory, had been expected to launch drills to express its anger at Taiwanese President Lai Ching-te’s tour of the Pacific
Taiwan’s military raised its alert level on Dec 9
“The current scale is the largest compared with the previous four,” Mr Sun said. “Regardless of whether they have announced drills, they are posing a great threat to us.”
Senior ministry intelligence officer Hsieh Jih-sheng told the same press conference there have so far been no live fire drills in China’s seven “reserved” airspace zones, two of which are in the Taiwan Strait, but there had been a significant increase in Chinese activity to the north of Taiwan over the last day.
The number of China navy and coast guard ships in the region, which a Taiwan security source told Reuters remained at around 90, was “very alarming”, and China was taking aim at other countries in the region and not only Taiwan, he added.
China’s deployment in the first island chain – which runs from Japan through Taiwan, the Philippines and on to Borneo, enclosing China’s coastal seas – is aimed at area denial to prevent foreign forces from interfering, Mr Hsieh said.
The ministry said China’s navy is building two “walls” in the Pacific, one at the eastern end of Taiwan’s air defence identification zone and the other further out in the Pacific.
“They are sending a very simple message with these two walls: trying to make the Taiwan Strait an internal sea” of China, said Mr Hsieh.
Earlier on Dec 10, Taiwan’s Defence Ministry said it detected 47 military aircraft operating around the island over the past 24 hours, as well as 12 navy vessels and nine “official” ships, which refers to vessels from ostensibly civilian agencies such as the coast guard.
Of the aircraft, 26 flew in an area to the north of Taiwan off the coast of China’s Zhejiang province, six in the Taiwan Strait and a further 15 to the island’s south-west, according to a map the ministry provided in its daily morning statement on Chinese activities.
A senior Taiwan security source told Reuters that the Chinese aircraft simulated attacks on foreign naval ships and practised driving away military and civilian aircraft as part of a “blockade exercise”.
Mr Lai and his government reject Beijing’s sovereignty claims, saying only Taiwan’s people can decide their future.
China says the Taiwan issue is the “core of its core interests” and a red line the US should not cross. China has held two rounds of major war games around Taiwan so far in 2024.
There has been no public announcement by the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) or state media about increased military activity in the East China Sea, Taiwan Strait, South China Sea or western Pacific Ocean, where Taiwan said Chinese ships had been detected.
However, a Beijing foreign ministry spokeswoman said on Dec 10 that China will “resolutely defend” its sovereignty.
The lack of an announcement from Beijing was unusual and, if drills were under way, could be a “deliberate strategy to sow confusion and exert psychological pressure”, Vietnam-based maritime security analyst Duan Dang said.
“China’s current movements resemble what we would see during preparations for real combat, exceeding the scale of previous exercises,” he added.
Taipei-based security analyst Michael Cole said the mix of PLA navy vessels and coast guard ships highlighted Beijing’s efforts to “increase interoperability” between the two.
“Such efforts also blur the lines between civilian and military components and thus complicate Taiwan’s ability to respond proportionally,” Mr Cole told AFP.
The escalating actions have come as Beijing’s rivals have drawn closer to the United States.
US Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin said on Dec 9 that China was the “only country in the world that has the intent and, increasingly, the capability to change the rules-based international order”.
“We want to see this region – this area – remain open to freedom of navigation and the ability to fly the skies and international airways whenever we want to,” Mr Austin said in a speech aboard the USS George Washington, an aircraft carrier stationed in Japan.
“We’re going to continue to work with our allies and partners to ensure that we can do just that.”
The US is Taiwan’s most important backer and biggest supplier of arms, but has long maintained “strategic ambiguity” when it comes to putting boots on the ground to defend the island.
Mr Lai said on Dec 6 he was “confident” of deeper cooperation with the next Donald Trump administration, a day after he spoke with US Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson which angered China.
China’s foreign ministry warned Taiwan on Dec 6 that “seeking independence with the help of the United States will inevitably hit a wall”, and called on Washington to “cease meddling in Taiwan-related affairs”.
The dispute between Taiwan and China goes back to 1949 when statesman Chiang Kai-shek’s nationalist forces were defeated by Chinese leader Mao Zedong’s communist fighters and fled to the island. REUTERS, AFP
