The Chinese military is ramping up massive military exercises in the South China Sea intended to brush back the United States as the Biden administration pleads with the Taliban to bring Americans back home from Afghanistan.
People's Liberation Army Navy forces are conducting drills in the South China Sea, Yellow Sea, and Bohai Strait near Korea until Thursday. The intense war drills come shortly after another set of military exercises off the coast of Taiwan intended to help China achieve "supremacy" in a potential showdown with the United States and Taiwan, and in response to recent activity in the South China Sea, according to one former Chinese colonel.
Lawmakers and experts say combative messaging around the exercises from China's military brass shows an increasingly relentless attitude from Beijing when it comes to seizing Taiwan. Brent Sadler, a senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation and former naval officer, told the Washington Free Beacon the war drills show the Chinese Communist Party is not just saber-rattling but also preparing for a conflict in the coming years.
"The timing of them may be normal, but the intensity and coordination of them are different," Sadler said of the exercise. "China is setting the battlefield for a fight if it should happen in this six-year period that it can fight on its terms. There's an urgency with that where we should similarly be setting the stage for more favorable conditions with our allies."
China's demonstrations come as President Joe Biden directs his national security team to focus on Afghanistan, where thousands of Americans are stuck behind Taliban lines. Though Vice President Kamala Harris is visiting Asia to engage allies on how to team up against Beijing, Chinese survey ships are already directly intruding into territory belonging to countries such as the Philippines and Indonesia. China also conducted another set of military exercises near Taiwan earlier in August, as well as a separate drill with Russian troops. The United States in turn is conducting its own annual maritime exercises with India, Australia, and Japan next week.
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