China on Thursday fired missiles and deployed fighters and ships in the waters around Taiwan, the first day of unprecedented military exercises around the island in response to the visit to Taipei by the Speaker of the House of Representatives. of the United States, Nancy Pelosi.
Twenty-two missiles fired by Beijing flew over the island, according to Taipei.
“Five” missiles fired by China would also have fallen for the first time in Japan’s exclusive economic zone (EEZ), southwest of the island of Hateruma, said Japanese Defense Minister Nobuo Kishi. Some islands in Okinawa Prefecture, in the south of the country, are only a few tens of kilometers from Taiwan.
Tokyo has called for an “immediate halt” to Chinese maneuvers around Taiwan. “Japan has lodged a protest with China through diplomatic channels,” Minister Kishi previously said, calling the incident “a serious issue that affects our national security and that of our citizens.”
Despite strong warnings from Beijing, which considers Taiwan as one of its provinces, Ms. Pelosi, one of the highest American officials, stayed Tuesday and Wednesday on the island.
Ms. Pelosi’s move is seen by China as a provocation, support for Taiwan independence supporters and a reneging on the United States’ promise not to have official relations with the island.
In response, the Chinese military has launched a series of military exercises in six sea areas all around Taiwan, along busy trade routes and sometimes just 20 kilometers from Taiwan’s shores.
The maneuvers, which began Thursday at noon (midnight in Quebec), included “conventional missile fire” towards waters off the east coast of Taiwan, said Shi Yi, a spokesman for the Chinese military.
“All missiles hit their target with precision, testing precision strike and access denial capabilities” to the area, he said in a statement.
Condemning “irrational actions that undermine regional peace”, the Taiwanese Ministry of Defense confirmed that the Chinese military fired “11” Dongfeng-type ballistic missiles “between 1:56 p.m. and 4:00 p.m. into northern waters, south and east of Taiwan. He did not say whether or not they flew over the island.
Shot and detonation
In Pingtan, a Chinese island located not far from the maneuvers in progress, AFP journalists witnessed the firing of several projectiles on Thursday afternoon, which flew into the sky after detonations, leaving behind plumes of smoke. white.
In the closest mainland location to Taiwan, reporters also spotted five military helicopters flying low near a seaside tourist spot.
The Chinese military exercises are due to end at noon on Sunday. According to the Chinese newspaper Global Times, which quotes military analysts, these maneuvers are on an “unprecedented” scale.
“If the Taiwanese forces voluntarily come into contact with [l’armée chinoise] and come to accidentally fire a shot, [l’armée chinoise] will respond vigorously and it will be up to the Taiwanese side to bear all the consequences,” an anonymous military source in the Chinese army told AFP.
The island’s authorities condemned the military exercises, “an irrational act aimed at challenging the international order”, according to them.
For Beijing, these maneuvers – as well as others, more limited, started in recent days – are “a necessary and legitimate measure” after Ms. Pelosi’s visit.
“In the face of malicious provocations that so blatantly infringe China’s sovereignty and territorial integrity, our countermeasures are justified,” Hua Chunying, a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman, told reporters on Thursday. .
The drills aim to simulate a “blockade” of the island and include “assaulting targets at sea, striking targets on the ground and controlling airspace”, according to the official Xinhua news agency.
Recurrent tensions
Major Taiwanese government websites were temporarily inaccessible during Pelosi’s visit, Taiwan authorities say, blaming cyberattacks linked to China and Russia.
If the hypothesis of an invasion of Taiwan, populated by 23 million inhabitants, remains unlikely, it has increased since the election in 2016 of the current president, Tsai Ing-wen. Coming from an independence party, Ms. Tsai refuses, unlike the previous government, to recognize that the island and the continent are part of “one China”.
Visits by foreign officials and parliamentarians have also increased in recent years, provoking the ire of Beijing.
In response, President Xi Jinping’s China, which wants to be intractable on questions of sovereignty, seeks to isolate Taiwan diplomatically and exerts increasing military pressure on the island.
However, China has no desire for the current situation to degenerate, experts told AFP.
“An accidental war” caused by an incident “is the last thing Xi Jinping wants” before the Chinese Communist Party Congress, said Titus Chen, professor of political science at National Sun Yat-Sen University in Taiwan.
Amanda Hsiao, China analyst at the International Crisis Group think tank, notes, however, that these exercises “represent a marked escalation from the norm of Chinese military activities around Taiwan and the last crisis in the Taiwan Strait in 1995-1996”.
And “by doing so, Beijing indicates that it rejects any sovereignty” of the Taiwanese authorities on the island, she underlines.