Explainer: What’s behind China’s latest war games around Taiwan

Nevin Al Sukari - Sana'a - Members of the Chinese People's Liberation Army (PLA) take part in the ‘Joint Sword-2024B’ military drills around Taiwan, from an undisclosed location in this screenshot from a handout video released by the PLA Eastern Theatre Command on October 14, 2024. — PLA Eastern Theatre Command handout via Reuters

TAIPEI, Oct 15 — China said its day of war games around democratically governed Taiwan yesterday was a warning against “separatist acts” and threatened more could be in the offing, drawing condemnation from the governments of Taiwan and the United States.

Though apparently shorter than previous drills, they were intense in terms of swift simulated attacks and deployment of ships and aircraft. The previous major war games in May followed Taiwan’s inauguration of Lai Ching-te as its new president.

Here is what we know about China’s strategic intentions behind this week’s drills and their new features.

Blockades

The Chinese military said part of the drills practiced what it called a “key port blockade”, severing Taiwan’s maritime lifeline for imports of trade, food and energy.

It aimed to show China’s ability to stop energy imports, especially at its ports offloading liquefied natural gas (LNG), military expert Zhang Chi of China’s National Defence University told the state-backed Global Times.

“The People’s Liberation Army wants to prove that we have the ability to block the import of energy resources for Taiwan, thereby having an important impact on the economy and society,” the newspaper quoted Zhang as saying.

Foreign military attaches and analysts say this element of the drills is being closely scrutinised, as such a tactic could pressure and isolate Taiwan ahead of any full-blown invasion.

Yesterday, Taiwan’s state-run energy company CPC said LNG imports had been unaffected, decrying as false news online suggestions to the contrary.

“This time there was a rather special component, the so-called quarantine or blockade, during which they practiced their blockading abilities,” said Su Tzu-yun, director of defence strategy and resources at Taiwan’s top military think tank, the Institute for National Defence and Security Research.

China is edging closer

The drill zones portrayed in a map issued by China’s military were closer to Taiwan than in previous exercises, with all, for the first time, including areas within Taiwan’s 24-mile (39-km) contiguous zone.

“All the drill zones they announced are more closely approaching Taiwan island, and all include the 24-mile zone,” Ma Chen-kun, a Chinese military expert at Taiwan’s National Defence University, told a forum in Taipei on Monday.

A more involved coast guard

China’s coast guard, now the world’s largest by far, was more heavily involved in Monday’s drills than earlier, encircling the Taiwan-controlled Matsu islands beside the Chinese coast and operating on both sides of Taiwan’s mainland.

Taiwan officials say use of the coast guard is part of a “grey zone” strategy that stops short of war and aims to enforce what China calls its right to manage and control the Taiwan Strait.

Analysts say China’s coast guard is able to keep up a near-constant presence near Taiwan and down into the disputed South China Sea.

Taiwan is particularly wary of Chinese coast guard efforts to board its civilian ships on law enforcement grounds. Such instances could be a very serious provocation that Taiwan’s coast guard would do everything to prevent, its deputy chief, Hsieh Ching-chin, said on Monday.

It was “unprecedented” for so many coast guard ships to patrol simultaneously around the island, said Collin Koh, of Singapore’s S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies.

The step “could herald a new norm for Beijing’s grey zone pressure on Taiwan,” he added.

Propaganda

Previous Chinese war games have been accompanied by the release of military videos of animations of missile attacks on Taiwan.

This time, one caricatured Taiwan President Lai Ching-te with devil-like pointed ears, in what one security source in Taiwan called an unusually personal attack on a man Beijing already detests as a “separatist”.

China also released two less slickly-made videos of navy sailors commenting on weather conditions and their locations, close to Taiwan’s major ports of Keelung and Kaohsiung.

Taiwan television stations show such videos as part of regular drill coverage. Taiwan’s government calls them part of “cognitive warfare” waged to sap confidence in its military.

Infiltration?

Shortly after the drills began, Taiwan’s coast guard said it detained a Chinese person using a rubber boat to approach one of the highly militarised Taiwan-controlled islets opposite China’s city of Xiamen.

The coast guard said it could not rule this incident out of China’s “grey zone” activities threatening Taiwan’s offshore islands during the drills. — Reuters