Mainland China’s military wraps up Joint Sword-2024A drills near Taiwan
- Social media accounts and media signal end to exercises staged as ‘punishment’ for ‘Taiwan separatists’
- Manoeuvres could become a new norm for the PLA, defence university professor says
In a post on the WeChat account of the PLA’s Eastern Theatre Command on Saturday, the command said the exercises by its land, navy, air force and missile forces were “punishment” for “Taiwan separatists” and a “severe warning” to outside forces intent on interference and provocation.
The drills, called Joint Sword-2024A, involved “advancing”, “besieging”, “blockading”, “attacking”, “destroying” and “cutting off”, according to the post.
They were launched three days after Taiwanese leader William Lai Ching-te made an inauguration speech that Beijing denounced as a “confession of independence”.
Lai’s office responded on Saturday, calling the drills “blatant provocation to the international order”.
The PLA has sent planes and warships to the strait as warnings in the past but this time the military aimed to test its warfare integration and ability to target Taiwan’s military and political nerve centres – centres that appeared as strike targets on maps released by the mainland Chinese military, according to mainland analysts.
Lieutenant Colonel Zhang Chi, an associate professor at the National Defence University of the PLA, told state broadcaster CCTV that such drills could become a new norm for the mainland.
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State news agency Xinhua quoted Meng Xiangqing, from the same university, as saying the vessels involved in the exercises were “unprecedentedly close to the coast of Taiwan”.
It was also the first time the mainland’s coastguard vessels had entered waters near the islands of Wuqiu and Dongyin off northern Taiwan, he said.
Taiwan’s defence ministry said on Saturday that 62 PLA aircraft and 27 PLA warships operated near the island in the 24 hours until 6am Saturday. Of those, 47 aircraft crossed the median line, a notional midpoint in the Taiwan Strait that Beijing does not recognise officially but rarely crossed until 2019.
On the first day of the drill, 49 PLA aircraft and 19 PLA ships, in addition to seven coastguard vessels, operated near the island, the ministry said. Of those, 35 aircraft crossed the median line.
