China is deploying its largest naval fleet in regional waters in nearly three decades, and the threat to Taiwan is more pronounced than during previous Chinese military exercises, Taiwan’s Ministry of Defense announced on Tuesday. . Defense Ministry spokesman Sun Li-fang said in Taipei that the scale of the current deployment of the Chinese navy in the area stretching from the southern Japanese islands to the South China Sea is the largest since China maintained military exercises around Taiwan in the run-up to the Taiwanese presidential elections 1996. The Chinese military has not yet commented or confirmed that it is conducting any exercises. China, which claims democratic Taiwan as its territory, was expected to launch the drills to express its anger over President Lai Ching-te’s Pacific tour that ended Friday and included Hawaii and the territory USA Guam.
Taiwan’s military raised the alarm on Monday after it said China had “reserved” airspace and deployed navy and coast guard ships.
“The current scale is the largest compared to the previous four,” Sun said. “Regardless of what they announced the exercises, they represent a great threat to us”.
The ministry’s senior intelligence official Hsieh Jih-sheng said at the same press conference that so far there have been no live ammunition exercises in China’s seven “reserved” airspace zones, two of which are in the Taiwan Strait, but that There has been a significant increase in Chinese activity north of Taiwan over the past day.
The number of Chinese navy and coast guard ships in the region, which a Taiwanese security source told Reuters remained at about 90, was very alarming.” China is targeting other countries in the region, not just Taiwan, he added.
China’s deployment in the first island chain, which goes from Japan through Taiwan, the Philippines and on to Borneo and closes off China’s coastal waters, aims to seal off the area to prevent interference from foreign powers, Hsieh said. .
The ministry announced that the Chinese Navy is building two “walls” in the Pacific, one at the eastern end of Taiwan’s air defense zone, and the other further out in the Pacific.
“With these two ‘walls,’ they are sending a very simple message: they are trying to make the Taiwan Strait an internal sea” of China, Hsieh said.
Earlier on Tuesday, Taiwan’s defense ministry said it had detected 47 military aircraft flying around the island in the past 24 hours, as well as 12 navy ships and nine “official” ships, which refers to vessels allegedly belonging to civilian agencies such as coast guard.
A senior Taiwanese security source told Reuters that Chinese planes simulated attacks on foreign navy ships and practiced deterring military and civilian aircraft as part of a “blockade exercise”.
China says the Taiwan issue is “at the heart of its core interests” and a red line the United States should not cross.
So far this year, China has held two large military exercises around Taiwan.