Beijing carries out anti-submarine, sea assault drills around Taiwan

The PLA staged anti-submarine and sea assault operations around Taiwan on Monday after 72 hours of unprecedented live-fire exercises that analysts said were intended to normalise such activities east of the Taiwan Strait’s median line.

The People’s Liberation Army Eastern Theatre Command said the joint drills were continuing in the waters and airspace around Taiwan.

It was not clear if the danger zones Beijing had designated for the drills – which supposedly lapsed at noon on Sunday – were back in force on Monday because the PLA did not officially declare the end of the war games.

Unlike its notices from Thursday to Sunday, the PLA’s daily announcement on Monday did not refer to the military conducting exercises “according to plan”.

The foreign ministry in Beijing said the PLA was conducting normal military exercises in its “own waters” in an open, transparent and professional manner. Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin also said the drills complied with domestic and international law.

In Taiwan, the transport ministry said air and marine traffic were gradually returning to normal.

Collin Koh, a research fellow with the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies at Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University, said he expected Beijing to continue to conduct drills more frequently to the east of the median line.

“Given that the drills were conducted on such a scale and intensity east of the median line, I don’t see reasons why the Chinese will go back from that from now on,” Koh said.

The median line in the Taiwan Strait is a de facto boundary between the island and mainland China. Beijing has not officially recognised the line but both sides have largely abided by it over the decades.

Beijing continues unprecedented drills around Taiwan

Song Zhongping, a former PLA instructor, said the aim was for the drills to become regular exercises, which could include live-fire activities, depending on whether the United States sent a carrier strike group to the area.

He also said there was no fixed date for the end of the extended drills.

A WeChat account affiliated with the nationalist tabloid Global Times also said on Sunday that the exercises might continue, given summer is the PLA’s peak drill season, but it remained to be seen whether they would be part of the Eastern Theatre Command’s “island blockade” series of exercises.

“After all, the drills from [Thursday] to [Sunday] successfully completed the relevant exercise objectives,” it said.

But Su Tzu-yun, a research fellow at the Institute for National Defence and Security Research in Taipei, said drills were less of a security threat to Taiwan and more about Beijing’s posturing in response to US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit.

He also disagreed that the PLA would make drills of this scale the norm because doing so would be costly.

“Deploying fighters and staging frequent exercises on the long term would strain [the PLA’s] logistical support,” Su said.

However, Taiwan would spend more on the military to close the gulf in defence spending across the strait and invest in missiles to quickly strengthen asymmetric warfare.

Taiwan spent US$13 billion on defence last year, a fraction of the estimated US$293 billion spent by the mainland, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. The budgets were around 1.7 per cent of GDP for both regions.

In the meantime, according to Lieutenant General Yeh Kuo-hui, from the Taiwanese defence ministry’s operations and planning department, the ministry will closely monitor PLA activities and whether it continues to cross the median line or come within 24 nautical miles (44.4km) of Taiwan’s coast.

The PLA also began its month-long live-fire exercises in the Bohai Sea on Monday and continued its drills in the southern parts of the Yellow Sea, which are expected to end on August 15.

Despite warnings from Beijing, Pelosi was the first US speaker of the House to visit Taiwan in 25 years.

Beijing sanctioned her and her immediate family members following the trip and accused her of changing the status quo across the Taiwan Strait.

She denied the accusation.

The White House said US officials had visited the island before and the drills were an “overreaction”.