This handout photo taken and released by Taiwan’s Coast Guard on December 12, 2024 shows a Taiwanese coast guard ship (L) monitoring a Chinese coast guard ship, a few nautical miles from Taiwan’s northeastern coast. Chinese navy and coast guard ships have returned to China, signalling the end of a massive maritime exercise, Taiwanese authorities said on December 13.
THE PHILIPPINE STAR | Published December 13, 2024
TAIPEI, Taiwan — Chinese navy and coast guard ships have returned to China, signalling the end of a massive maritime exercise, Taiwanese authorities said Friday.
Beijing has not confirmed the drills and its defense ministry did not say whether the manoeuvres had taken place when asked at a press conference on Friday.
But ministry spokesman Wu Qian said that “whether or not we hold exercises, and when we hold them, are decided by us alone, based on our own needs and the circumstances of our struggle”, according to an official social media account of the armed forces.
“Safeguarding national sovereignty and territorial integrity, the fundamental interests of the Chinese nation, and the common interests of compatriots across the Taiwan Strait are the (military’s) sacred duties,” Wu said.
“No matter whether it holds exercises, the People’s Liberation Army will not be absent or soft-hearted when it comes to striking down (Taiwanese) ‘independence’ and pushing for unification,” he said, referring to the Chinese armed forces.
Taiwanese authorities said this week that Beijing’s biggest maritime drills in years stretched from near the southern islands of Japan to the South China Sea.
About 90 Chinese warships and coast guard vessels took part in the exercises, which included simulating attacks on foreign ships and practising blockading sea routes, a Taiwan security official said Wednesday.
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SOURCE: www.philstar.com
RELATED: China’s ‘drills that dare not speak their name’ put Taiwan on alert
JAPAN TIMES | Published December 13, 2024
TAIPEI –
Beijing has unveiled a new tactic on Taiwan, the democratic island it claims as its own, officials and experts say: large-scale drills with no fanfare to normalize a heightened military presence and let the U.S. know that China can act whenever it wants.
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 Friday when it quoted ancient Chinese tactician Sun Tzu’s “Art of War,” a favourite of the communist republic’s founder Mao Zedong.
“Just as water retains no constant shape, so in warfare there are no constant conditions,” the defence ministry 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 past practice of unleashing a massive propaganda push to coincide with war games around the island.
A senior Taiwan 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 Taiwan’s President Lai Ching-te, a person Beijing denounces as a “separatist”. One animation caricatured Lai with devil-like pointed ears.
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SOURCE: www.japantimes.co.jp
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