He is proud that he was able to get very close to “the treasure island of the motherland,” says a pilot of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army in a video shot from the cockpit of a fighter plane. The images show the coastline of Taiwan and the mountains beyond.
Chinese state media and the Chinese internet are abuzz over the weekend with images showing how close the Chinese military has managed to get to the coast of Taiwan. There are also images of a soldier looking at the Taiwanese coastline from a ship. The photo shows the chimney of what is likely the Hoping Power Station on Taiwan’s east coast, a major power plant for the island’s energy supply.
Taiwan’s Ministry of Defense spoke on Sunday of a “simulated attack on the main island of Taiwan and on Taiwanese naval ships.” That attack was carried out by several Chinese aircraft, naval vessels and drones, according to Taiwan. They were also active in and around the Taiwan Strait on Sunday morning.
China does not dispute that. “We have come very close to Taiwan. We have surrounded Taiwan,” said Zhang Junshea researcher from the People’s Liberation Army Naval Research Institute against the Financial Times.
A spokesman for the US National Security Council therefore spoke this weekend of “a significant escalation in China’s efforts to change the status quo on the island.”
Restored
China began military exercises around Taiwan on Thursday, exercises that ended for the most part on Sunday afternoon. Much of the civil aviation and shipping around Taiwan has since been restored.
Still, Taiwan and China are not returning to what they were before Nancy Pelosi, the Speaker of the US House of Representatives, made her controversial visit to the island on Tuesday and Wednesday. She also stated that the US stands wholeheartedly behind Taiwan as a democratic beacon of hope in the region.
China has managed to create a new normal around Taiwan in a number of important areas. For example, China has repeatedly crossed the centerline in the Taiwan Strait, a line that has long been an informal border between mainland and China, respected by both China and Taiwan.
China has already crossed that border before, but now states very explicitly that that border does not exist at all and has never existed. China therefore no longer sees the Taiwan Strait as an international body of water where all countries automatically enjoy the right of free passage. Because if Taiwan is part of China, what is internationally about the water that separates the island from mainland China?
This can have very serious consequences in the long run. The Strait is the main shipping route from Asia to Europe and the Middle East 88 percent of the largest container ships run through the Strait this year. Whoever controls the Straits controls a large part of world trade.
Flo Zhang, the Chinese analyst, added something important to his statement: “We have also shown that we can effectively counter intervention by foreign powers,” Zhang said.
He seems to be right about that. In any case, it is true that neither the US nor Japan have taken any military action to thwart the exercises. This may indicate powerlessness, but rather appears to be an unwillingness to escalate the situation further.
The exercises have been so successful in Chinese eyes that the country announced on Sunday that it wants to do even more in the future. This means that the exercises, in which Taiwan is partially or completely cut off from the outside world, can just become a new routine.
It all doesn’t bode well for the defense of Taiwan. If the US and its allies didn’t get in the way of the Chinese military this time, would they do it next time? In any case, China hopes to convince the Taiwanese people with these exercises that the answer will be a convincing ‘no’.