A handout photo from Taiwan's military news service showing service personnel working at an undisclosed location. Photograph: Taiwan military news service
A handout photo from Taiwan's military news service showing service personnel working at an undisclosed location. Photograph: Taiwan military news service
Taiwan says China used 66 planes and 14 warships in Sunday's drills
Taiwan’s defence ministry said it had detected 66 Chinese air force planes and 14 Chinese warships conducting activities in and around the Taiwan Strait on Sunday, Reuters reports.
Thursday’s drills involved the live firing of 11 missiles. On Friday, 68 Chinese planes were reported making approaches, with 49 entering what Taiwan’s considers it air defence identification zone.
Taiwan’s defence ministry said 14 ships and 20 planes were active on Saturday, with 14 crossing the “median line” which has acted as an unofficial delimiter of Taiwan’s de facto territory.
Hello to our live blog readers watching news developments involving China and Taiwan, following military exercises conducted by Beijing around the island democracy in the days since the visit to Taipei by US House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi early last week.
It’s 6am local time in Taipei on Monday morning. Here’s where things stand:
Taiwan’s top diplomat in the US, de facto ambassador Bi-khim Hsiao, compared China to a bully but asserted that her island democracy intended “to resolve our political differences through dialogue.”
Joe Biden has been pretty quiet about Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan last week but, behind the scenes, the US president’s team has intervened to delay progress on some hawkish legislation introduced in the US Senate that undermines America’s “strategic ambiguity” on the one-China policy.
The defence ministry of Taiwan said it had detected 66 Chinese air force planes and 14 Chinese warships conducting activities in and around the Taiwan Strait on Sunday.
China again conducted military drills and exercises around Taiwan on Sunday. The four-day show of military strength had been a response to US politician Nancy Pelosi’s visit to the disputed territory earlier in the week.
Taiwan’s defence ministry earlier said it has sent aircraft and ships to “appropriately” react to Chinese military drills around the island.
China’s navigational warnings and NOTAMs for military exercises around Taiwan have expired, excluding in one area, and China didn’t extend those exercises as some had previously thought they might.
Taiwan’s transport ministry said flights through its airspace had gradually resumed on Sunday about noon as most notifications for Chinese military drills near the island were “no longer in effect”.
Taiwan’s official Central News Agency has reported that Taiwan’s army will conduct live-fire artillery drills in southern Pingtung County on Tuesday and Thursday, in response to the Chinese exercises.
The Chinese military will from now on conduct “regular” drills on the eastern side of the median line of the Taiwan Strait, Chinese state television reported on Sunday, citing a commentator.
Taiwan’s mainland affairs council (MAC) – which sets policy towards the People’s Republic of China (PRC) – has called on Beijing authorities to “exercise restraint and immediately stop all of its belligerent behaviours”. The council accused the PRC of continuing with its military exercises around Taiwan “as part of a simulation for an attack and a blockade in order to intimidate Taiwan and neighbouring countries”.
Taiwan’s PremierSu Tseng-chang said China has “arrogantly” used military actions to disrupt regional peace and stability. Speaking to reporters in Taipei on Sunday, Su also called on Beijing to not flex its military muscles, and condemned “foreign enemies” he said were attempting to sap the morale of the Taiwanese people through cyberattacks and disinformation campaigns.
A White House spokesperson has said China is trying to “change the status quo” through its military drills around Taiwan.
Taiwan’s top diplomat in the US has said the self-governing island has been “bullied, marginalised and isolated from the world” for too long and maintained its people would not surrender their freedom.
Beijing has announced it will hold further military exercises near the southern part of the Yellow Sea and Bohai, near South Korea. The exercises are expected to start on Monday 8 August and last until 8 September.
US secretary of stateAntony Blinken has reassured the Philippines that the US would come to its defence if attacked in the South China Sea.
"We intend to resolve our political differences through dialogue" - Taiwanese rep
Taiwan’s top diplomat in the US, the de facto ambassador Bi-khim Hsiao, compared China to a bully in an interview aired on Sunday.
Of Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan last week, Hsiao told CBS Face the Nation:
The visit has been welcomed by the Taiwanese people. Sometimes it’s hard for other countries from afar to fully understand the feelings and perspectives of the Taiwanese people and that is, for too long, you know, we have been bullied, isolated and suppressed and banned from international organizations, even though we have built a modern, open, prosperous democracy.
And so when friends come from afar and wish to lend their support to Taiwan, we generally take that with gratitude.
CBS’s Margaret Brennan asked Hsiao if she was concerned that “the West won’t stand by Taiwan the way it has stood by Ukraine?”. Noting that China “is financially so powerful it would be hard for the West to cut it off.”
Hsiao said:
I think that was one of the messages that Speaker Pelosi was trying to convey. And that is, you know, despite all challenges, we have friends in the international community who will stand with us.
Hsiao said she thought Beijing had been planning the extensive military exercises in which it has menaced Taiwan on an unprecedented scale for the past four days for a good deal of time before Pelosi visited.
She said:
My President has called on the Chinese government to exercise restraint. We intend to resolve our political differences through dialogue. And that is the only way that will preserve the stability of the region.
And it is the only way that will protect the interests of not only Taiwan and not only China, but the whole world.
Taiwan's Rep. to the U.S. Bi-khim Hsiao on China’s suspension of talks with America on climate and military matters: pic.twitter.com/z0BYV9KOfp
From US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s tweets since she left Taiwan last week you wouldn’t think she’d even created a ripple in a thimble.
Pelosi is celebrating the US Senate passing the Inflation Reduction Act this afternoon and pledging to bring the House back into session asap with every prospect of it passing there and then heading to Joe Biden’s desk to be signed into law.
Congratulations to @SenateDems for the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act.
This bill is a major step forward in Democrats' fight to put #PeopleOverPolitics: lowering kitchen table costs, reducing the cost of health care, creating jobs and addressing the climate crisis.
The Speaker has also been tweeting about US voting rights, the strong July jobs numbers, the microchips legislation, women’s rights, gun violence and birthday wishes to Barack Obama. Nothing on Taiwan since her whirlwind visit.
I led a Congressional delegation to Taiwan to make crystal clear that America stands with the people of Taiwan – and all those committed to Democracy and human rights.
The People’s Republic of China’s spending on its military has risen by more than 700% since it last conducted major live-fire armed forces exercises close to Taiwan in 1996, one US expert points out.
In the 26 years since, China has grown very much more prosperous and industrially modern but, in the last 10 years, more autocratic under the regime of Xi Jinping, making the large-scale military manoeuvres that just wound down after four days especially daunting.
Stanford University political scientist Oriana Skylar Mastro told CNN that it appeared, to outside observers at least, that China had probably accomplished what it set out to do, in that it successfully demonstrated an ability to menace Taiwan militarily on “an unprecedented scale”.
With multiple types of aircraft buzzing the island democracy, naval ships including destroyers, supply vessels and aircraft carriers gliding about in the Taiwan Strait, submarines chugging around underwater and missiles whizzing overhead, all of them “operating together in close proximity” in the direction of Taiwan was “really significant,” she said.
In the 1995-1996 events, China conducted four rounds of live-fire exercises in the area but “never fired more than six missiles” and none flew across Taiwan, as happened this time.
“We will probably see additional rounds of military exercises in the future without even an announcement,” she said, adding that the latest exercise was designed “to show that China can take Taiwan whenever it feels ready to do so,” Mastro told CNN.
The Crisis Group’s Amanda Hsiao summarises the hardware and territorial strategy:
Aug 6-7 Chinese countermeasures for Pelosi’s visit to TW
Last update, barring major developments
- Median line activity - Simulated blockade and attack N, S, E of TW - Drones, ADIZ - CH insists world on its side 1/
“China has dramatically raised the military threat to Taiwan, we [the US] would be derelict if we didn’t raise our capacity to deal with it.”
So said Richard Haass, the president of the New York-based Council on Foreign Relations thinktank, a little earlier today, talking to CNN.
He said he does not believe the US should change its fundamental policy towards the status of China and Taiwan.
“I think we should continue to tell China that we do not support Taiwanese independence,” Haass told Fareed Zakaria’s GPS show.
That does not diverge from the idea of boosting support for Taiwan.
He tweeted the New York Times editorial article that we blogged about earlier.
Noteworthy that @nytopinion now advocating for greater clarity re US willingness to come to Taiwan defense. Any such pledge needs to be complemented by greater eco and military ties as well as clarity that the one China policy stands. @NYTOpinionhttps://t.co/gK6qzkwoVZ
Joe Biden has been pretty quiet about Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan last week in the days since it happened but, behind the scenes, has kicked an important legislative can down the road.
“The Biden administration still has congressional temperatures to cool when it comes to US policy toward the self-governing island,” Politico writes.
One way to do that is to buy some time on a hawkish bipartisan bill introduced in the US Senate, the Taiwan Policy Act, that aims to take the initiative by aggressively boosting US support for Taiwan, including rewriting some long-held basics of the US-Taiwan relationship.
The Taiwan Policy Act was introduced in June by New Jersey Democratic senator Bob Menendez and South Carolina Republican senator Lindsey Graham.
Among several measures it would, most eye-catchingly, provide a new chunk of $4.5bn in security assistance to Taiwan and designate the island democracy – which operates independently but is claimed by the People’s Republic of China as part of its single Chinese nation governed by Beijing – and have the US designate Taiwan as “a major non-Nato ally”.
That could be seen to undermine (rip up?) America’s delicate “strategic ambiguity” on the status of the two societies, where it supports the notion of “one China” by diplomatically acknowledging there is only one Chinese government and, in parallel, won’t countenance Beijing taking Taipei by force and would assist Taiwan’s self-defence.
Politico notes that the Taiwan Policy Act “represents the most dramatic shakeup of the US-Taiwan relationship since the Taiwan Relations Act, which has guided US policy on the subject since 1979”.
An important step to advance the legislation in the Senate last Wednesday was postponed and the White House is now getting involved, apparently to try to make changes to the legislation in the coming weeks. The Politico report is here.
The Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall in Taipei. Photograph: Sam Yeh/AFP/Getty Images
An editorial in the New York Times today begs the US and China to calm things down in the brouhaha over Taiwan, arguing that “it is in everyone’s interest for the two most powerful nations on Earth to find ways of easing these tensions.”
The article by the US paper’s editorial board asserts that House speaker, Nancy Pelosi’s, visit to Taipei last week, infuriating the Beijing government, “was ill-timed.”
A billboard in Taipei last week. Photograph: Chiang Ying-ying/AP
The New York Times warns the US that “treating China as a hostile power is a counterproductive oversimplification” of geopolitics and notes that “the uncomfortable reality is that the US and China need each other” as evidenced by robust trade that has continued between the two nations even as other communications, about military cooperation and action on the climate crisis, have been suspended by China.
And the paper says adds that the US “needs to move past the old idea that economic engagement would gradually transform Chinese politics and society,” suggesting that “instead of trying to change China, the United States should focus on building stronger ties with China’s neighbors” because behaving unilaterally makes America less effective on the regional and world stages.
You can read the whole article here (NB: NYT has a paywall.)
Although China’s military exercises around Taiwan have wound down and appear to have ended, there is no official confirmation that ‘this is it’, it should be noted for the record.
Neither Beijing nor Taipei, the capitals of the People’s Republic of China and Taiwan respectively, have confirmed the conclusion of the event.
For information about another country’s military exercises we suggest you please ask the country conducting them to explain,” a Taiwan defence ministry official told reporters in a text message, Agence France-Presse reports.
China’s defence ministry did not respond to a request for comment about the expected conclusion of the drills on Sunday, AFP further notes, as the clock ticks towards midnight and the dawning of Monday local time in Taiwan.
Pro-independence flags in Taipei. Photograph: Sam Yeh/AFP/Getty Images
China has wrapped up its unprecedented four days of drills that showcased Beijing’s growing military prowess and determination to challenge what it called “any attempt to separate Taiwan from China”, after the controversial visit to the island democracy last week by the US House speaker, Nancy Pelosi.
Over the course of the drills, Beijing responded with test launches of ballistic missiles over Taiwan’s capital city, Taipei, for the first time. It also halted some ties with the US, including cancelling a number of efforts to keep communication channels open between military commanders and suspending bilateral collaborations on the climate crisis.
Chinese and Taiwanese warships shadowed each other on Sunday in the hours before the scheduled end of the military exercises. The People’s Liberation Army said its drills focused on testing China’s long-range air and ground strikes.
Taiwan responded to Beijing with its own show of defiance. Its official news outlet, Central News Agency, reported that its army would conduct live-fire artillery drills in the southern Pingtung county on Tuesday and Thursday. In the last few days, Taipei’s diplomats have also condemned Beijing’s actions in front of international media.
Taiwan’s defence ministry said it had detected 66 Chinese air force planes and 14 Chinese warships conducting activities in and around the Taiwan strait on Sunday.
The two sides are engaged in a dispute over whether the Chinese destroyer Nanjing came within 12km of Taiwan.
Taiwan’s military information service has just posted to social media to deny that this happened, saying:
Stories from People’s Republic of China media claim that People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) destroyer Nanjing was found 11.78 km away from Hoping Power Plant in Hualien. The Republic of China (Taiwan) navy denounces such disinformation. No PLAN vessel has entered our territorial waters since 4 August when the People’s Liberation Army drill started.
Stories from PRC media claim that PLAN destroyer Nanjing was found 11.78 km away from Hoping Power Plant in Hualien. #ROCNavy denounces such disinformation. No PLAN vessel has entered our territorial waters since August 4 when the PLA drill started.
— 國防部 Ministry of National Defense, R.O.C. 🇹🇼 (@MoNDefense) August 7, 2022
Reuters is carrying some further quotes from China’s foreign minister Wang Yi.
It quotes him saying that China’s action on Taiwan are just, appropriate and legal. He said the actions were aimed at safeguarding China’s sacred sovereignty, and he reiterated that Taiwan is not part of the territory of the US, but that it is China’s territory.
He made the comments after arriving in Bangladesh for a visit.
Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi, centre left, and his Bangladeshi counterpart A K Abdul Momen applaud as both countries sign agreements in Dhaka, Bangladesh. Photograph: Mahmud Hossain Opu/AP
Taiwan’s official military news service has posted to social media a message in praise of the response of Taiwanese service personnel. It said:
The Naval Command stated that naval officers and soldiers responded to challenges with a calm and calm attitude, and used various types of equipment such as shore-based missiles to ensure peace and stability in the region and safeguard the safety of the Republic of China (Taiwan) people.
Taiwan says China used 66 planes and 14 warships in Sunday's drills
Taiwan’s defence ministry said it had detected 66 Chinese air force planes and 14 Chinese warships conducting activities in and around the Taiwan Strait on Sunday, Reuters reports.
Thursday’s drills involved the live firing of 11 missiles. On Friday, 68 Chinese planes were reported making approaches, with 49 entering what Taiwan’s considers it air defence identification zone.
Taiwan’s defence ministry said 14 ships and 20 planes were active on Saturday, with 14 crossing the “median line” which has acted as an unofficial delimiter of Taiwan’s de facto territory.
Taylor Fravel, a professor and director of the security studies program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology has told the Wall Street Journal that “China now clearly has the confidence and the capability to conduct exercises close to Taiwan itself, from all directions.”
“The exercises demonstrate that China may now be able to carry out some kinds of operations that it may have been unable to do in the past, such as carrying out an actual blockade of Taiwan’s ports, perhaps closing the Taiwan Strait,” Fravel added, suggesting that Beijing would be likely to try and carry out similar exercises again.
It is 8.30pm in Taiwan. Here is a summary of the day’s events so far.
China again conducted military drills and exercises around Taiwan on Sunday. The four day show of military strength had been a response to US politician Nancy Pelosi’s visit to the disputed territory earlier in the week.
Taiwan’s defence ministry earlier said it has sent aircraft and ships to “appropriately” react to Chinese military drills around the island.
China’s navigational warnings and NOTAMs for military exercises around Taiwan have expired, excluding in one area, and China didn’t extend those exercises as some had previously thought they might.
Taiwan’s transport ministry said flights through its airspace had gradually resumed on Sunday about noon as most notifications for Chinese military drills near the island were “no longer in effect”.
Taiwan’s official Central News Agency has reported that Taiwan’s army will conduct live-fire artillery drills in southern Pingtung County on Tuesday and Thursday, in response to the Chinese exercises.
The Chinese military will from now on conduct “regular” drills on the eastern side of the median line of the Taiwan Strait, Chinese state television reported on Sunday, citing a commentator.
Taiwan’s mainland affairs council (MAC) – which sets policy towards the People’s Republic of China (PRC) – has called on Beijing authorities to “exercise restraint and immediately stop all of its belligerent behaviours”. The council accused the PRC of continuing with its military exercises around Taiwan “as part of a simulation for an attack and a blockade in order to intimidate Taiwan and neighbouring countries”.
Taiwan’s Premier Su Tseng-chang said China has “arrogantly” used military actions to disrupt regional peace and stability. Speaking to reporters in Taipei on Sunday, Su also called on Beijing to not flex its military muscles, and condemned “foreign enemies” he said were attempting to sap the morale of the Taiwanese people through cyberattacks and disinformation campaigns.
A White House spokesperson has said China is trying to “change the status quo” through its military drills around Taiwan.
Taiwan’s top diplomat in the US has said the self-governing island has been “bullied, marginalised and isolated from the world” for too long and maintained its people would not surrender their freedom.
Beijing has announced it will hold further military exercises near the southern part of the Yellow Sea and Bohai, near South Korea. The exercises are expected to start on Monday 8 August and last until 8 September.
US secretary of state Antony Blinken has reassured the Philippines that the US would come to its defence if attacked in the South China Sea.
