China Deploys 'Astonishing' Number Of Warships After Taiwan President's Trip To Hawaii, Guam

China Deploys 'Astonishing' Number Of Warships After Taiwan President's Trip To Hawaii, Guam

TYLER DURDEN

While all eyes in the West have been busy following events in Syria, Ukraine, and Gaza - China's military has been making big moves around Taiwan, and interestingly this comes with just weeks to go before the new Trump administration enters the White House.

Taiwan’s Defense Ministry announced Tuesday that it is monitoring a surge of Chinese military activities in the Taiwan Strait and Western Pacific. This state of 'high alert' has been on since Monday, and new major PLA military drills are expected.

The deployment of PLA vessels extends well beyond waters off Taiwan, strongly suggesting Beijing is readying for new exercises which threaten other regional US allies as well, such as the Philippines.

According to details in CNN:

An "astonishing” number of Chinese vessels have been deployed at a scale that “could block external forces,” Lt. Gen. Hsieh Jih-Sheng, deputy chief of the General Staff for Intelligence, said at a Taiwan Defense Ministry briefing Tuesday.

The People’s Liberation Army (PLA) naval deployment was not only targeting Taiwan, Hsieh said, adding that the geographic spread stretched into waters past the first island chain. The strategically significant chain of islands encompasses Japan, Taiwan, parts of the Philippines and Indonesia, and as long been a key plank in the US maintaining its position as the dominant power in the Pacific.

Gen. Hsieh further said in the statement, "The PLA’s recent activities not only exerted military pressure on Taiwan. Its naval forces, specifically, have significantly raised its posture around Taiwan and the Western Pacific."

But it remains that the PLA military has yet to announce any formal drills as of Tuesday evening (local time), but Taipei expects it.

All of this appears retaliation and a pressure campaign by Beijing for Taiwan President Lai Ching-te's alleged "separatist" activities. China has condemned Lai's unofficial visits to Hawaii and Guam during a South Pacific tour which went on all last week.

China’s military appears to be up to something around #Taiwan

"China’s navy is creating two walls — one at Taiwan’s perimeter and another outside the first island chain, which extends south from Japan and through Taiwan to the Philippines," Lt. Gen. Hsieh Jih-sheng said. “The message they are sending is very simple: The Taiwan Strait is ours,” he said, referring to the waters between Taiwan and China. Taiwan’s Defense Ministry said Tuesday that it has detected a dozen Chinese naval ships and 47 military planes in the past 24 hours but no live-fire activity as in previous military exercises. The deployment covers a wider area this time, with additional ships going beyond Taiwan into other parts of the Pacific, defense officials said at a news conference. The military has been bracing for possible drills by China in response to a recent overseas trip by Taiwanese President Lai Ching-te that included Hawaii and Guam, an American territory.

China claims Taiwan as part of its territory and opposes the self-governing island having official interactions with other countries, and in particular, the United States. Lai spoke with U.S. congressional leaders by phone while in Guam last week.

Without any announcement from China on military drills, Taiwan officials are calling the ongoing activity a training exercise. Hsieh noted that training can become drills, and drills can become war. “It’s in the status of regular training,” he said. “But under the status of normalized training, it’s able to mobilize military forces on such a large scale and carry out exercises in such a large area.”

Taiwan’s military set up an emergency response center on Monday in response to the increased Chinese naval activity and the announcement of flight restrictions in seven zones off China’s east coast. The restrictions are in place until Wednesday.