The exercises, dubbed “Justice Mission 2025,” saw China fire dozens of rockets toward Taiwan and deploy a large number of warships and aircraft near the island, raising concerns from the region and Western allies.
Beijing announced the completion of the drills late on Wednesday, saying its military would remain on high alert and strengthen its combat readiness.
In response, Taiwan’s defense ministry said that because a significant number of Chinese aircraft and ships were still in its response area, its armed forces would maintain “appropriate emergency procedures”. Didn’t explain it.
“The Chinese Communist Party’s aggressive and militant provocations threaten regional security and stability, and have been condemned by democratic allies in the international community,” he said in a statement.
Chinese President Xi Jinping immediately after Beijing’s announcement. The latter struck a familiar tone on Taiwan in his New Year’s address, repeating last year’s warning that it respects what it calls forces seeking Taiwan independence.
They are bound by blood ties thicker than water to compatriots on both sides of the Taiwan Strait, and the historic trend toward national unity is about to stop. “
China claims that Taiwan is democratically governed as its territory, and has not ruled out using force to keep it under Chinese control. Taiwan, which rejects China’s claims, condemned the latest drills as a threat to regional security and an outright provocation.
According to Kwan Du Ling, head of Taiwan’s Ocean Affairs Council, Chinese vessels were moving away from Taiwan by Tuesday night.
“The sea situation has calmed down with ships and vessels slowly departing,” he said in a post on Facebook late on Tuesday.
A Taiwanese coast guard official told Reuters that all 11 Chinese coast guard ships had left the waters near Taiwan and were leaving. Emergency response centers for the military and coast guard remained active, a Taiwanese security official said.
The region was home to more than 90 Chinese naval and coast guard vessels, many of them near Taiwan and the East China Sea, the South China Sea and the East China Sea, two security officials in the region told Reuters earlier.
The officials, who declined to be identified because of the sensitivity of the matter, said the size of China’s maritime deployment had steadily increased since earlier this week.
China is in the midst of what has become a busy season for military exercises.
Taiwan’s defense ministry said on Wednesday that 77 Chinese military aircraft and 25 navy and coast guard vessels were operating around the island in the past 24 hours.
It added that 35 of those military aircraft had crossed the Taiwan Strait median line that separates the two sides.
‘Strong Warning’
As the war games unfolded, the ambassadors of the United States To China David Perdue posted a photo of himself on the X with ambassadors from the countries of the Quad, which includes the United States, Australia, Japan and India.
In the post, he described the Quad as a “force for force” working to maintain a free and open Indo-Pacific but did not elaborate on what the meeting discussed or when it took place.
The U.S. State Department said Perdue regularly meets with diplomats and Chinese officials to advance the U.S. president’s agenda. “Consistent with these routine meetings, he met with the quad ambassadors in Beijing on December 19,” a State Department spokesman told Reuters.
China’s most extensive war games drills by coverage area to date forced Taiwan to cancel dozens of domestic flights and send jets and warships for monitoring. Soldiers conducted rapid response drills that included setting up barricades at various locations.
China views the exercises as a “necessary and fair measure” to protect national sovereignty and territorial integrity, Zhang Han, a spokesman for its Taiwan Affairs Office, told reporters at a weekly briefing on Wednesday. He added that they were “a stern warning against Taiwan’s independence from separatist forces and foreign interference.”
China’s state news agency Xinhua published an article summarizing “three key takeaways” from the exercises, which began 11 days after the United States announced a record $11.1 billion arms package for Taiwan.
Citing Zhang Chi, a professor at the PLA National Defense University, the article said the “encirclement” demonstrated the People’s Liberation Army’s ability to “suppress and control the press and separatist forces contained within them – an approach summarized as ‘sealing internally and blocking externally’.”
Despite the increasing intensity of China’s war games, Beijing is unlikely to start a war at the cost of its reputation, said Lyle Goldstein, head of the Asia Program at the US think tank Defense Priorities.
“They make a lot of threats and a lot of obfuscation, but ultimately (a war) would be very expensive for China if nothing else,” Goldstein said.
