(Fenggang Township) Taiwan’s military conducted a live ammunition artillery drill on Tuesday simulating the island’s defense against a Chinese invasion, following massive military maneuvers by Beijing for several days.
Posted at 10:33 p.m.
An AFP reporter on the spot saw the start of operations in Pingtung County (south) shortly after 8:40 a.m., with flares and artillery fire.
The drill ended around 9:30 a.m., said Lou Woei-jye, spokesman for Taiwan’s Eighth Corps.
The drills, with a second scheduled for Thursday, will involve the deployment of several hundred troops and about 40 howitzers, the military said.
China launched its biggest military maneuvers around Taiwan last week, in response to a visit by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, the highest-ranking US official to visit the self-governing island in decades.
Beijing believes that Taiwan, which has around 23 million inhabitants, is one of its provinces, which it has not yet managed to reunify with the rest of its territory since the end of the Chinese Civil War (1949) .
Mr. Lou assured Monday that the Taiwanese exercises were already scheduled and that it was not a response to the ongoing Chinese exercises.
The island regularly holds military exercises simulating a Chinese invasion. The latest, last month, when she trained to repel attacks from the sea during a “joint interception operation”.
These were his biggest annual exercises.
Biden “not worried”
The Taiwan drills come after China extended its own joint sea and air maneuvers around the island on Monday.
For Washington, the risk of escalation from Beijing is low.
“I’m not worried, but I’m concerned that they’re moving around so much. But I don’t think they’re going to do anything more,” Joe Biden told reporters at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware.
Before starting its own military exercises, Taipei on Tuesday condemned the fact that Beijing continues its maneuvers around the territory.
“China’s provocation and aggression have undermined the status quo of the Taiwan Strait and raised tensions in the region,” Taiwan’s foreign ministry said in a statement.
No Chinese warplanes or ships entered Taiwan’s territorial waters – within 12 nautical miles of land – during the Beijing drills, Taiwan said.
Last week, however, the Chinese military released a video of an Air Force pilot filming the island’s coast and mountains from his cockpit, showing how close he had come. Taiwanese coasts.
Ballistic missiles were also fired over the Taiwanese capital, Taipei, during the drills last week, Chinese state media reported.
The scale and intensity of China’s drills — coupled with its withdrawal from international climate and defense negotiations — have drawn outrage from the United States and other Western countries.
But Beijing on Monday defended its behavior, calling it “firm, forceful and appropriate” in the face of US provocation.
“(We) are only issuing a warning to those responsible” for this crisis, Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin said at a press briefing, promising that China would “firmly break the illusion of the Taiwanese authorities to obtain independence through the intermediary of the United States”.