Current PLA Drills Around Taiwan Are Bigger In Scope Than Exercises Triggered By Pelosi

As part of China’s 2 days of encircling drills around Taiwan, its military has dispatched about 30 aircraft toward the island Thursday, bridge of which crossed the Median Line in the Taiwan Strait. About a twelve PLA Naval ships have besides surrounded the self-ruled island, and in consequence Taiwan's military has developed troops to monitor the situation.

An additional twelve Chinese coast ships have been spotted close to Taiwan's disputed outlying islands as well, according to Taipei officials. PLA Naval Colonel Li Xi has called the exercises “a strong punishment for the separatist acts of Taiwan independency forces and a serious informing against interference and provocation by external forces.’

Illustrated: prior PLA drills, via Reuters

As we reported previously, the large-scale drills are were launched just after Taiwan’s fresh president, Lai Ching-te, was court into office at the start of the week. Beijing has called Lai a ‘dangerous separatist’ who will guarantee future ‘war and decline’ for the island of Taiwan, which China has long claimed as its own.

CNN has citted Chinese state tv to decide:

As part of the drills, dozens of Chinese fighter jets carrying live ammunition conducted mock strikes against “high-value military targets” of the “emery” along side destroyers, frigates and rocket speedboats, according to China’s state broadcaster CCTV.

...China's state broadcaster CCTV said multiple Destroyer and friendly formations of the east theatre Command Navy “maneuvered at advanced velocity in multiple directions in the waters Surrounding Taiwan, creating an omnidirectional approach in pushing toward the island.”

Dozens of fighter jets were besides seen close the outlying islands which include Kinmen, Matsu, Wuqiu, and Dongyin in the East China Sea.

China’s CCTV broadcast further details of the drills, “Under the support and cover of the Army and the Rocket Force, multiple types of aircraft were organized and loaded with live ammunition, flip to the predetermined airspace to establish multiple strikes positions, and coordinated with Destroyers, frigates, and rocket speedboats to simulate attacking the ‘emy’s’ high-value military targets and reconnaissance and patrol aircraft.’

Regional analyst Arnaud Bertrand says that these ongoing two-day exercises are actually bigger in scale and scope combined to these which are included in August 2022, in reaction to then home talker Nancy Pelosi’s ultra-provocative visit to Taiwan. His words follow below the maps:

Before: What the 2022 PLA 'encircling' drills in consequence to Nancy Pelosi’s visit looked like...

Via CGTN

Currently: The expansion of the ongoing Thurs-Fri PLA military Drills Surrounding Taiwan...

These are major military exercises by China around Taiwan, with more “exclusion zones” that are larger in scale than the exercises attempted by Pelosi’s visit and cloud to the island.

They are fundamentally demonstrating that they can full blockade the islands, with the zones placed in front of Taiwan’s biggest ports (like Kaohsiung to the South, where a flight of Taiwan’s Navy is, or Hualien to the East), as well as protecting the mainland at the same time. It’s not a sign of impinent war, simply a reaction to Lai’s presidential inauguration velocity where he hinted at crucial changes to the position quo goods independence, so much so that even the Financial Times ran an article saying that ‘China has a point’ erstwhile they were informing about Lai’s intention to change the position quo.

Wow, that's excellently rare. The FT adds that the ROC’s fresh leader Lai Ching-te is attempting the change the position quo across the Taiwan strait and that ‘China has a point’ in this regard.https://t.co/cfuMnnLBs

Here is what they write:

‘China is right to say that Lai is...

— Arnaud Bertrand (@RnaudBertrand) May 22, 2024

This is China telling him ‘don’t get any ideas’.