CHINA’S MILITARY EXERCISES over the past couple of days in the waters and air around Taiwan have been a barely disguised attempt to test the People’s Liberation Army’s preparedness to launch a military invasion of the island.
A Chinese military spokesman has now confirmed as much, although many of the elements, such as landing craft and big support warships, that would be needed for an actual invasion were absent from the drills. Nevertheless, Taipei has reported dozens of violations of its air defence zone, although these are an increasingly frequent occurrence.
The exercises followed Monday’s inauguration of Taipei’s new president, Lai Ching-te. In his inauguration speech, Lai, a pro-independence firebrand in his youth, reaffirmed cross-Strait policy continuity with his predecessor Tsai Ing-wen and avoided overtly bellicose rhetoric towards Beijing.
Yet he also eschewed his predecessor’s practice of referring to the mainland indirectly so as not to draw a distinction between China and Taiwan as separate entities.
Beijing predictably took Lai’s use of ‘China’ as a declaration of separatist intent, although Beijing’s dislike of Lai means that such sentiments would likely have been read into anything he said, however phrased, and this week’s military exercise, necessarily planned well in advance of the inauguration, would have been staged anyway.
China Bystander 