China has fired rockets towards Taiwan as it pressed ahead with a second day of large-scale military drills, in which it also rehearsed a blockade of the self-governed island.
China’s military said on Tuesday it had deployed navy destroyers, bombers and other forces as part of the war games, which Beijing claims are aimed at “separatist” and “external” forces.
The drills were due to include live-fire exercises between 8am and 6pm local time (00:00 to 10:00 GMT) in five maritime and airspace zones around Taiwan, as well as air and sea patrols, simulated precision strikes and anti-submarine manoeuvres, according to Chinese state media.
Taiwan’s Ministry of National Defense said some of the live-fire drills would take place in what Taiwan considers its territorial waters, or within 12 nautical miles (equivalent to 22km) from the coastline, according to Taiwan’s Central News Agency.
Taiwan’s coastguard said seven rockets were fired into drill zone one and two. The drill zones are designated areas in the waters surrounding Taiwan that China’s military has cordoned off for live-fire exercises.
More than 80 domestic flights were cancelled on Tuesday, many to Taiwan’s outlying islands, and more than 300 international flights could face delays due to rerouted air traffic during the drills, according to Taiwan’s Civil Aviation Administration.
The exercises, code-named “Justice Mission 2025”, began early Monday and came days after the United States announced its largest-ever weapons package for Taiwan, worth $11.1bn.
State news outlet The China Daily said the drills were “part of a series of Beijing’s responses to the US arms sales to Taiwan as well as a warning to the [Taiwanese president] Lai Ching-te authorities in Taiwan”, in an editorial on Monday.
China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson, Lin Jian, also told reporters on Monday that the exercises were “a punitive and deterrent action against separatist forces who seek Taiwan independence through military buildup, and a necessary move to safeguard China’s national sovereignty and territorial integrity”.
Justice Mission 2025 marks the sixth time China has staged large-scale military drills around Taiwan since the then-US Speaker of the House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi visited Taiwan in 2022.
A key focus of the “Justice Mission 2025” exercises will be “anti-access and area denial capability” to ensure that Taiwan cannot receive supplies from allies like Japan and the US during a conflict, according to William Yang, senior analyst for Northeast Asia at the International Crisis Group.
“China has dispatched its army, its navy, its air force and its rocket force and it sent them essentially to encircle Taiwan,” said Al Jazeera’s China correspondent, Katrina Yu, in Beijing.
Yu said these exercises covered a region larger than ever previously done by Beijing, which was “practising cutting Taiwan off from the rest of the world”.
The exercises were a signal to any country aiming to stop China in the event it attempts to forcefully take over Taiwan, Yu added.
They will also include simulating a blockade of Taiwan’s major ports in the north and south, and taking control of strategically important waterways, like the Bashi Channel and Miyako Strait, through which Taiwan imports much of its energy supplies, Yang said.
Zein Basravi, reporting for Al Jazeera in Taiwan, said both sides appeared to be “edging toward conflict” rather than dialogue.
“The worry is any time there is this kind of escalation – even though manoeuvres, and exercises like this are relatively routine – when they scale up like this, when there is this much rhetoric, from Taipei, from Beijing, the worry is the threshold for open conflict continues to fall lower and lower,” Basravi added.
China’s Eastern Theater Command released a poster on Tuesday, titled “Hammer of Justice: Seal the Ports, Cut the Lines”, showing large metal hammers hitting the port of Keelung in the north and the port of Kaohsiung in the south.
Taiwan’s Defense Ministry said it had tracked 130 air sorties by Chinese aircraft, 14 naval ships and eight “official ships” between 6am on Monday (22:00 GMT, Sunday) and 6am on Tuesday (22:00 GMT, Monday).
The exercises were also monitored by Taiwanese coastguard ships and an undisclosed number of naval vessels, according to Taiwan’s Defense Ministry.
