China’s threat to Taiwan and the region has been evolving since 2022, when it began its current series of war games, and its recent large-scale buildup of maritime forces is a testament to this, the Ministry of National Defense said yesterday.
China’s long-term goal of deterring regional parties and disrupting the rule-based international order will not be endorsed by the international community, the ministry said in a statement.
Beijing has unveiled a new tactic against Taiwan: large-scale drills with no fanfare to normalize a heightened military presence and let the US know that China can act whenever it wants, officials and experts said.
Photo: Ann Wang, Reuters
For four days this week, Taiwan went on alert in response to what it said was China’s largest massing of naval forces in three decades around Taiwan, and in the East and South China seas.
China’s military said nothing until yesterday, when it quoted ancient Chinese tactician Sun Zi’s (孫子) The Art of War (孫子兵法).
“Just as water retains no constant shape, so in warfare there are no constant conditions,” it said, a cryptic statement that neither confirmed nor denied that Beijing had been holding military exercises.
The initial silence was a departure from China’s practice of unleashing a massive propaganda push to coincide with war games around Taiwan.
A senior Taiwanese security official this week termed China’s activities as “drills that dare not speak their name.”
China’s “Joint Sword-2024B” war games in October were accompanied by a flood of military and state media graphics and videos lambasting President William Lai (賴清德).
“I clearly believe this is the beginning of the mid-stage of normalization,” said Democratic Progressive Party Legislator Chen Kuan-ting (陳冠廷), who sits on the legislature’s Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee.
“Neighboring countries have to be aware that if they don’t respond accordingly, they themselves may become the next target,” Chen said.
Taiwan late on Thursday signaled that the Chinese activity had wound down by closing its emergency response center.
One fear Taiwan has is of Chinese drills suddenly turning into an actual attack.
A Taiwanese intelligence official this week said China was trying to wrongfoot them by keeping silent.
Analysts say that Beijing’s activities, conducted in near silence and followed by an opaque statement, are meant to create confusion.
“What’s changed here is the scale of the exercise and lack of clarity from China about what was involved,” said Drew Thompson, a senior fellow at Singapore’s S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies and a former US Department of Defense official. “This only underscores the lack of certainty of China’s intentions.”
China has over the past five years sent its warships and warplanes almost daily into the waters and air space around Taiwan, in what Taiwanese officials see as a creeping effort by China to “normalize” its military presence.
The ministry said this time the naval deployment extended across the First Island Chain, which runs from Japan through Taiwan, the Philippines and on to Borneo, enclosing China’s coastal seas.
Its control by China could prevent US forces coming to Taiwan’s assistance in the event of conflict.
“It’s a tricky operation, showing on the one hand their dissatisfaction with Taiwan, and on the other showing the US and its allies that it has military muscle, flying the flag, to show their ability to control the First Island Chain,” said Su Tzu-yun (蘇紫雲), a research fellow at the Institute for National Defense and Security Research.
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