Recent patrols by China’s air force in and around Taiwan appear to be part of a coordinated strike plan across different branches of Chinese military that will encompass the entire area - possibly as preparation for military conflict with the self-ruled island, experts say.
The air force conducted several “island encirclement” patrols in and around Taiwan in recent days, the People’s Liberation Army said on Thursday - one day after the mainland’s navy carried out a live-fire drill in the Taiwan Strait.
Song Zhongping, a former member of the PLA’s Second Artillery Corps, said that although the live-fire drill appeared smaller than expected, that was probably because it was part of a wider mission.
“It seems like the exercise near Fujian was relatively small, but actually, there were several joint operational drills happening in different areas around Taiwan at the same time [on Wednesday],” he said.
“The comprehensive, joint operational drills suggest the PLA is not just targeting one area, but the whole region.”
Tension has been high between China and Taiwan since Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen - whose Democratic Progressive Party advocates for independence from China - was elected president in 2016.
China has said that if Taiwan attempts to declare independence, it will view that as grounds for military intervention to take the island back.
The PLA said various aircraft, including H-6K bombers, Su-30 and J-11 fighters, spy jets, early-warning planes and others, had taken part in the island encirclement patrols.
Taiwan’s defence ministry said it spotted two H-6K bombers flying over the Miyako Strait in Japan, and through the Bashi Channel, between Taiwan and the Philippines, en route to the Western Pacific. Both Taiwan and Tokyo said they scrambled aircraft and warships to monitor the activity.
On Wednesday, the PLA’s ground force said it had sent an aviation unit to take part in the 15-hour live-fire drill off the coast of southwestern China’s Fujian province. It described the day and night drills as “routine” to test the forces’ all-weather combat capabilities.
China’s military newspaper PLA Daily said that Z-9 and Z-19 helicopters were used to simulate missile attacks on warships.
Song, who is now a military commentator on Phoenix Television, said that the PLA appeared to be building a “comprehensive plan” to resolve the Taiwan issue, in which a battle group led by the Liaoning aircraft carrier – which conducted its first systematic drills after taking part in a massive naval parade off the coast of Hainan province last week – was likely to play a key role.
“The ground force’s aviation drills in Fujian, the air force’s flying over the ‘first island chain’ and the Liaoning full-voyage exercises all indicate that the PLA has a comprehensive battle plan for Taiwan,” he said.
The “first island chain” is a series of archipelagoes lying between China and the Western Pacific, which Beijing says has been used by the United States as a natural barrier to contain it since the cold war.
Another military expert, who asked not to be named, said the latest drills were undoubtedly part of the PLA’s preparations should it ever decide to try to take back Taiwan by force.
Beijing said earlier that the purpose of the live-fire drill in the Taiwan Strait was to deter separatists on the island. But to the people living on the Taiwan-controlled island Quemoy, which lies about 60km (37 miles) from the drill site, the military presence was nothing new.
“People are used to hearing the roar of the guns, it’s been going on for decades,” said Cindy Lin, who runs a travel agency on Quemoy. “Ninety per cent of people here believe Beijing just wants to frighten the Taiwanese people, but won’t actually hurt us.”
A Pawn in Their Game: US Cozies Up to Taiwan, Angering China
As mainland China launches live-fire drills in the Taiwan Strait and state-owned Beijing media outlets warn of protective military measures, Taipei has waved away the threat, suggesting that the large-scale war exercises are “routine.”
After Chinese President Xi Jinping recently presided over the largest military exercise by the country since 1949 — a massive parade of warships in the disputed South China Sea — state-owned Beijing media outlet Xinhua warned Taiwan and its longstanding military ally the US that independence moves by the island nation will not be tolerated.
But the administration of US President Donald Trump continues to buck a foreign policy long held by earlier US presidents, that there would be no overt support of Taiwan independence, in spite of military and other forms of ongoing assistance, alongside Washington's trade-war threats.
Trump and his administration appear to be escalating the anger in Beijing, as significant steps by Washington in recent months intending to increase diplomacy with Taipei are seen by China as, at best, regionally destabilizing or, at worst, a provocation to an actual military conflict.
Following his unlikely ascendancy to the US presidency, Trump opened the recent degradation in Sino-US diplomatic relations by accepting a congratulatory telephone call from Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen, in contravention of some 40 years of diplomatic protocol.Trump went so far as to suggest that his friendship with Taipei would force China to provide trade concessions with the US, an assertion met with overwhelming derision around the globe. Even shocked Taiwanese officials were quick to downplay the remarks, noting with concern that the small country was at risk of being used like a pawn and then tossed away, cited by the South China Morning Post (SCMP).
Taipei is considered by Beijing as a satellite vassal state, although the approximately 36,000-square-mile island country — just 110 miles from the mainland — claims that it is an independent sovereign nation, a view that Washington has tacitly adhered to since Taiwan's formation in 1949.
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