Analysis: What Message is China Sending with 'Strait Thunder-2025A' Exercise?

TaiwanPlus News

China has launched a second day of military drills, now named "Strait Thunder-2025A" around Taiwan. Ping-Kuei Chen of National Chengchi University tells TaiwanPlus that the latest drills aren't as big as last year's and that Beijing hasn't committed enough forces to enforce a blockade of Taiwan.

Transcript

00:00What's the signal China is sending to Taiwan with these exercises?

00:03It's the signal that China always tries to send.

00:06It's the resolve to use force to take Taiwan.

00:09If Taiwan tries to declare independence or something else that China would not accept.

00:16But I think this time, the signal is not only sending to Taipei, but also Washington.

00:22I think this is a signal that tries to warn Washington that China would not abandon using

00:30force against Taiwan if Taiwan is heading to a direction that China doesn't want.

00:37We know that the Trump administration hasn't had a chance to talk about the Taiwan issue

00:43with Beijing.

00:44So this might be a signal that Beijing tries to send in advance.

00:50China's military says it's practicing a blockade of Taiwan with these exercises.

00:54What's your take on that?

00:56I would say this might be a practice for future blockade.

00:59But on a scale of the exercise, we cannot say this is an exercise of a blockade.

01:08If you want to do the blockade of Taiwan, you definitely need more forces.

01:15This is, I would say, not a very large-scale exercise compared to last year or the year before.

01:24So to some extent, this might be a good news that China is not increasing its military

01:31threat to a significant level.

01:36How is Taiwan responding to China's military drills?

01:39So Taiwan is preparing its own regular exercise.

01:43So we have annual Hanguang exercise.

01:47They will conduct computer exercise in the next few days and live fire exercise in July.

01:53And this year, they will conduct city battle exercise as well.

01:59And there is an exercise to practice the social model of mobilization, to practice how fast

02:06that we can mobilize the resources within the society.

02:11So I would say the situation is that Taiwan is getting more and more prepared for an incoming

02:18conflict in the case of Chinese invasion.

02:23This is a response that Taiwan had to do facing China's military threat.

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