China’s military held long-range live-fire drills in the East China Sea on Wednesday in an escalation of drills around Taiwan, saying it was practising precision strikes on port and energy facilities.
Beijing has reacted angrily to tough statements from the Pentagon that the US would follow a policy of deterrence over Taiwan, threatening the island and advancing its strike aircraft carrier group.
The Shandong, the second of two carriers fully deployed by the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), moved into Taiwan’s air defence identification zone on Tuesday — backed by jets, missile units and support vessels — in the second large exercise in a month.
A day later, the PLA’s Eastern Theatre Command said that its ground forces had conducted long-range live-fire drills into the waters of the East China Sea, though it did not give an exact location.
“The drills involve precision strikes on simulated targets of key ports and energy facilities, and have achieved desired effects,” it said, without elaborating.
The exercises follow anti-Beijing rhetoric from Washington and statements at the weekend by Pete Hegseth, President Trump’s defence secretary, who said that the US military posture should be dedicated to countering China and deterring pressure on Taiwan.
The Chinese leadership was unapologetic, saying the exercises were targeting President Lai of Taiwan and his “pro-independence rhetoric”.
China’s Taiwan Affairs Office said: “Lai Ching-te stubbornly insists on a ‘Taiwan independence’ stance, brazenly labelling the mainland as a ‘foreign hostile force’, and has put forward a so-called ‘17-point strategy’ stirring up anti-China sentiments. We will not tolerate or condone this in any way and must resolutely counter and severely punish these actions.”
The exercises were accompanied by an unusual propaganda blitz. The Eastern Theatre Command released online cartoons portraying Lai in varying guises, one as a small slug or worm being picked up with chopsticks and cooked, with the caption “parasite courting ultimate destruction”. The PLA navy opened YouTube and X accounts for the first time.
More serious social media posts said the exercises focused on “sea and air combat readiness, seizure of comprehensive control, sea-to-land strike and key road blockade control” — all tactics that would be part of an actual invasion scenario.
In all, 21 warships, four coastguard vessels and 71 jets were deployed in the Chinese exercise, according to the Taiwan defence ministry.
Taiwan accused China of “blatant military provocations”, after similar drills across the Pacific and particularly in the South China Sea, including off the coast of Australia and New Zealand, Japan and the Philippines.
China claims sovereignty over Taiwan, whose leaders assert its self-governing status while avoiding a formal declaration of independence, which would almost certainly trigger an invasion by China.
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US strategists are uncertain whether President Xi intends to take control of the island by force and until recently maintained a “strategic ambiguity” about whether the US would use its military superiority to defend the island.
However, that has started to change: first under President Biden and now with the arrival of “China hawks” in key positions under Trump, including Hegseth and the US secretary of state, Marco Rubio.
Hegseth used a visit to Japan at the weekend to counter fears that Trump’s isolationist rhetoric would mean abandoning Taiwan to “reunification” and to say that China was now the primary threat to the US.
Hegseth was complimentary to his Japanese hosts and announced an upgrade to US military forces in the country, a sharp contrast to the White House’s angry challenge to Europe and its assumption that America would defend it.
Some Trump advisers have questioned whether the defence of Taiwan should be an “America First” priority. Hegseth, who was also attempting to reassert his security credentials after the row over leaked conversations discussing plans for bombing raids in Yemen, put himself clearly in the “hawk” category.
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“America is committed to sustaining robust, ready and credible deterrence in the Indo-Pacific, including across the Taiwan Strait,” he said at a press conference with the Japanese foreign minister, Gen Nakatani. “Japan would be on the front lines of any contingency we might face in the western Pacific and we stand together in support of each other.”
