Taiwan has objected to what it says were unannounced Chinese live-fire naval exercises in busy waters near its south-western coast, in a further sign of disruption caused by the People’s Liberation Army’s rapidly expanding operations.
Taiwan’s defence ministry said the PLA on Wednesday notified commercial ships and aircraft through ad hoc radio warnings of “shooting drills” in a training area 40 nautical miles off the municipality of Kaohsiung and neighbouring Pingtung County.
Such a move in an international shipping lane “not only poses grave danger to international aviation and the navigation of ships at sea, but presents an open provocation to regional security and stability”, the ministry said.
China’s Maritime Safety Administration did not issue a navigational warning for Wednesday’s drills, as it tends to ahead of exercises in waters or airspace claimed by China, nor were there notifications for international air traffic.
The drills come less than a week after a PLA Navy flotilla conducted live-fire drills off the east coast of Australia. China also did not provide direct advance notice to Canberra of those drills, which only became known through radio warnings to pilots.
The area demarcated for Wednesday’s shooting drills off Taiwan is in international waters, where militaries are free to conduct exercises.
But it was significantly closer than the exercises near Australia, according to people familiar with the situation, and overlapped with several shipping lanes in the southern part of the Taiwan Strait that are traversed by vessels from south-east Asia, the Middle East, Africa and Europe en route to Chinese and Taiwanese ports as well as parts of South Korea and Japan.
It was unclear how much shipping had been affected by the drills. But apart from navigational safety concerns, Taipei views such manoeuvres with particular concern in light of China’s claims to sovereignty over Taiwan and threats to annex it by force.
The drills were located near Taiwan’s largest port. Past PLA drills have simulated a blockade that could form part of Beijing’s strategy in an attempted takeover of Taiwan.
“The PLA has repeatedly included blockade scenarios in past large exercises around Taiwan,” said a foreign diplomat in Taipei. “That they now choose to locate a live-fire drill area in the approach lane to Kaohsiung port is to be seen in that same context.”
The exercises were part of “combat readiness patrols” that the PLA now conducts near Taiwan about every 10 days. Taiwan’s defence ministry said 32 PLA aircraft were operating around the country on Wednesday as part of the drill.
It has also reported heightened PLA naval activity in the vicinity of Taiwan’s territory for the past three days.
