Beijing Launches Second Round of Military Drills Near Taiwan After More US Lawmakers Visit Island

In a statement on Monday, Senior Colonel Shi Yi, a spokesperson for the Eastern Theater Command of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA), announced a second round of military drills near Taiwan to deter “political tricks” by the United States and authorities in Taiwan, following a second trip by US lawmakers to the island.

Shi said the PLA’s Eastern Theater Command in Nanjing had “organized joint combat-readiness security patrol and combat training exercise involving troops of multiple services and arms in waters and airspace around Taiwan Island,” according to the Defense Ministry.

No further details were given about the drills, in sharp contrast to those carried out earlier this month in response to US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) traveling to Taiwan and meeting with senior leaders there. These, too, are in response to a visit to Taiwan by five US lawmakers on Sunday.

China regards Taiwan as a Chinese province in rebellion and sees any support for the government there as interference in China's internal affairs. The government in Taiwan was once the republican government of all of China, but it lost the civil war in 1949 when the socialist People’s Republic of China was founded on the mainland. Since then, the forces in Taiwan have maintained their autonomy from Beijing only thanks to US support, even though Washington switched its recognition of the legitimate Chinese government from Taipei to Beijing in 1979.

When Pelosi was in Taiwan, she declared Washington’s “solidarity” with Taipei and promised the US would “not abandon” Taiwan to what she called Chinese “authoritarianism.” US Senator Ed Markey (D-CA) and the four others who arrived in Taiwan on Sunday have made similar declarations, saying their visits are intended to send a message to China, too.

“Consistent with our commitments under the Taiwan Relations Act, the United States must continue to support Taiwan’s meaningful participation in the international community and help Taiwan withstand cross-Strait coercion,” Markey said in a statement. “We must continue to work together to avoid conflict and miscalculation in the Taiwan Strait.”

However, Markey has said nothing about the US warships and aircraft heading toward that 80-mile-wide waterway separating Taiwan from the mainland. Since Beijing sees Taiwan as a Chinese province, it also sees the strait as part of its internal waters, instead of international waters, as the US claims.

“We will ensure that our presence, posture and exercise account for China’s more provocative and destabilizing behavior towards guiding the situation in the western Pacific towards greater stability,” Kurt Campbell, the US National Security Council Coordinator for the Indo-Pacific, told reporters on Friday. “We will continue to take calm and resolute steps to uphold stability in the face of Beijing’s ongoing efforts to undermine it, and to support Taiwan in line with our long-standing policy.”

The Pentagon has said it plans to conduct regular air and sea transits of the strait, which are seen as provocative during calmer times, to say nothing of the present situation. It echoes the US Navy’s patrols of the strait during the First and Second Taiwan Strait crises of the 1950s, which prevented the PLA from crossing the strait and reuniting the country. The mutual defense treaty with Taiwan has since been abrogated, due to the US no longer formally recognizing the Taiwanese government, making the new patrols even more awkward.