China is using its recent military drills to make the Taiwan Strait its internal waters and further approach the 12 nautical mile (22.2km) baseline of Taiwan’s territorial waters, a military expert yesterday told a forum at National Chengchi University.
Beijing launched live-fire military drills around Taiwan in August last year following a visit to Taipei by then-US House of Representatives speaker Nancy Pelosi. It launched a second round of large-scale military drills earlier this month after President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) on April 5 met with US House Speaker Kevin McCarthy in California.
In last year’s drills, the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) established a “new normal” by unilaterally ignoring the median line of the Taiwan Strait, with military aircraft and vessels crossing it, said Ma Chen-kun (馬振坤), director of the Graduate Institute of China Military Affairs Studies at National Defense University.
Photo: EPA-EFE / Taiwan Ministry of National Defense
“This time, the PLA conducted ‘combat readiness patrols and joint exercises’ around Taiwan without announcing in advance where the drills would be held. Nor did it set up no-fly zones. This shows that the PLA intended to put further pressure on Taiwan by making the Taiwan Strait its internal waters and pushing its defense to Taiwan’s east coast,” Ma said.
From now on, China would conduct combat readiness patrols more frequently without warning to further compress Taiwan’s defense lines at sea and in the air, he said.
Meanwhile, the combat readiness patrols would not disrupt air and shipping services across the Taiwan Strait, which decreases the negative response from the international community, he added.
Although the public did not respond strongly to the most recent Chinese military exercises as no missiles were launched, the drills could have devolved into combat at any time because the Chinese aircraft and vessels were all equipped with live ammunition, Ma said.
“The scenarios practiced in the military exercises this time were likely intended to represent the Chinese Communist Party authorizing the use of military force to deter Taiwanese independence activities. As such, live ammunition was used in the military drills, making them similar to the Phase-II field verification drills in [Taiwan’s] annual Han Kuang exercises,” he said.
The military drills this time posed a greater threat than in August last year, he added.
“Military units in the PLA Navy and Air Force were deployed to tactical positions on the first day of the drills, which subsequently turned into launch positions,” he said. “This shows that the drills were held based on possible scenarios in actual combat. The PLA was reported to be able to use anti-ship ballistic missiles to hit targets at sea, which would threaten our warships.”
The drills further showed that the PLA can engage in anti-ship warfare, a capability that it had yet to achieve by 1995, Ma said.
China could escalate its military threat against Taiwan, using its combat readiness patrols as a pretext to break into Taiwan’s 24 nautical mile contiguous zone and even come close to its territorial waters baseline of 12 nautical miles, Ma said.
“Any political party that governs the country would have to address the threat from China, and we hope that the public can support our troops while they are preparing for a potential war,” he said.
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