China Conducts Large-Scale Military Drills Around Taiwan Without End Date

TaiwanPlus News

Taiwan’s military is on alert as China carries out exercises in the region. Beijing says the drills are meant to punish what it calls “separatist forces” as it once again practices how to blockade Taiwan.

Transcript

00:00Taiwan's military is on alert as China carries out military exercises in the region.

00:05We go live now to our defense reporter Haimei Ocon in our newsroom.

00:09Haimei, what do we know so far?

00:14So China's Eastern Theater Command said that starting April 1st it'd be conducting

00:19large-scale military exercises around Taiwan with no end dates. Now China says that the

00:24all branches of the military have been deployed to quote

00:27approach Taiwan Island from multiple directions. Now the drills are supposed to practice air and

00:33sea patrols as well as practice how to blockade key sea routes around Taiwan to test China's

00:38combat capabilities. Now Taiwan's military has confirmed that one of China's aircraft carriers

00:44the Shandong as well as 19 other warships are operating in the region and already we're seeing

00:49images released by Taiwan's defense ministry of the navy here shadowing Chinese warships that

00:54are sailing just outside of Taiwan's maritime border. Now Taiwan's presidential office and the

01:00defense ministry have called out China saying that once again these actions are extremely

01:04provocative and that they're damaging stability in the region.

01:07Now we do know that there is a large concentration of Chinese navy ships operating in waters around the

01:28southeastern part of Taiwan and China's coast guard is now slowly making its way trying to

01:32surround the main island of Taiwan. Now the military here has set up a response center to

01:37manage and oversee that activity but other than that that's all the activity that the

01:41defense ministry has reported so far. Well Jaime do we know why China is conducting these exercises?

01:53Yeah actually we do so China's Taiwan affairs office made a statement saying that these drills

01:58are meant to punish what Beijing is calling separatist forces and they're mentioning

02:02President Lai Ching-da's recent speech where he released 17 strategies to counter Chinese

02:08infiltration espionage and psychological warfare and they're also calling President Lai Ching-da

02:13a parasite. Chinese social media has released some videos depicting the president as a cartoon

02:20bug so this is a very clear reaction to that speech but something that a lot of observers

02:24are a little more concerned about is number one the lack of a name for the exercise and number two

02:29the lack of an end date. China's military has already come out and said that they don't need

02:33to name all of these exercises because this is a new normal and when it comes to the dates sources

02:38have told me that this is textbook gray zone warfare from China and trying to wear down and

02:43put pressure on Taiwan's military and also be very unclear about what its intentions are in the region.

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