Taipei/Beijing, Nov 10 (EFE).- China’s massive military movements off Taiwan’s coast appears not to be limited to deterring the island, a Taipei intelligence official said Tuesday, describing the scope of Beijing’s naval deployment as “astonishing.”
In a press conference, the head of the Ministry of National Defense’s (MND) Office of Deputy Chief of General Staff for Intelligence, Hsieh Jih-sheng, said that Beijing’s alleged military drills cover an area of approximately 1,000 kilometers, from Shanghai to the province of Fujian, which indicates that “the target of deterrence is not limited to Taiwan.”
According to the official, the number of Chinese vessels deployed in recent hours is “indeed astonishing,” with ships also in the interior of the Western Pacific, forming a fleet that can block foreign forces between the first and second island chains.
The First Island Chain is a strategic concept that commonly refers to the line between the Kuril Islands and Vietnam, passing through Japan, Taiwan, and the Philippines and over the tip of Malaysian Borneo, while the second chain extends from the Japanese Ogasawara archipelago to Palau.
With this measure, China aims to create two naval “walls” in the Pacific—one located east of Taiwan’s self-proclaimed Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ) and another further out in the ocean—to convey the message that the Taiwan Strait is Beijing’s internal waters, said Hsieh.
Chinese authorities established seven “temporary reserved areas” of airspace along its coast on Sunday, a measure that will extend until 8 pm (12:00 GMT) on Wednesday.
In response, the MND said it had “opened a response center and maintained a high degree of alert” and had also begun “combat readiness drills” in anticipation of possible Chinese military maneuvers in these areas.
While Beijing has not confirmed that any military operation is underway, Hsiehs aid Taiwanese forces cannot wait until these situations occur before responding; otherwise, it will cause domestic social chaos.
The intelligence official also said that while no live-fire exercises had been observed in these seven reserved areas, two of which are in the Taiwan Strait, the number of naval and air forces in northern Taiwan and east of Zhejiang had “increased significantly” in the past day.
China on Tuesday assured it will defend its national sovereignty, with Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning saying at a press conference that Taiwan “is an internal matter of China” and that Beijing will resolutely protect its territorial integrity, without giving further details on the matter.
These possible military drills come just days after Taiwan’s President William Lai concluded a tour of the South Pacific with stops in Taiwan’s three allies in the area—the Marshall Islands, Tuvalu, and Palau—and stops in the US territories of Hawaii and Guam, which angered China.
On Tuesday morning, the MND said that in the 24 hours till 6am on Tuesday (22:00 GMT on Monday), it had detected 47 Chinese aircraft and 12 warships in the vicinity of Taiwan, in addition to another nine Chinese “official ships.”
China considers the president of Taiwan, a territory governed autonomously and the sovereignty of which is claimed by Beijing, to be an “independence activist” and a “troublemaker.” EFE
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