After its military maneuvers, China reaffirms the option of “force” to conquer Taiwan

Photo: Greg Baker Agence France-Presse A man watches a news program about Chinese military exercises around Taiwan on a giant screen outside a shopping mall in Beijing.

Amber Wang – Agence France-Presse and Sam Davies – Agence France-Presse respectively in Taipei and Beijing

Published at 10:26

• Asia

China reaffirmed on Monday, at the end of a day of military maneuvers to encircle Taiwan with its planes and warships, that it will “never” abandon the option of “using force” to conquer the island.

These exercises were presented by the Chinese army as a “warning” to “separatists”, a message addressed to the Taiwanese authorities, regularly accused by Beijing of campaigning for the independence of the island territory.

China considers Taiwan to be one of its provinces, which it has yet to reunify with the rest of its territory since the end of the Chinese Civil War in 1949.

“We are ready to work for peaceful reunification with the utmost sincerity and with all our efforts,” Wu Qian, a spokesman for China's Defense Ministry, said in a statement released after the drills.

“But we will never promise to renounce the use of force and we will never give any space to those who advocate Taiwan independence,” he stressed.

Monday's drills, dubbed Joint Sword-2024B, included in areas north, south and east of Taiwan, according to the Chinese military.

125 Chinese aircraft

She said she had deployed fighters, bombers, destroyers, frigates and the aircraft carrier Liaoning. The Chinese coast guard was also mobilized.

China has “successfully completed” these maneuvers, which have made it possible to “fully test the integrated joint operations capabilities of its troops,” Li Xi, a spokesman for the Chinese army, said in a statement early in the evening.

These exercises included in particular “sea-air combat preparation patrols, the blockade of ports and key areas” and “the assault of maritime and land targets,” he said earlier in the day.

Taiwan detected a total of 125 Chinese aircraft near the island on Monday, a senior intelligence official at Taiwan's Defense Ministry, Lt. Gen. Hsieh Jih-sheng, said, calling it a “single-day record.”

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The United States had denounced the operations as “unjustified.” Since 1979, Washington has recognized Beijing to the detriment of Taipei as the only legitimate Chinese power, but remains Taiwan's most powerful ally and its main arms supplier.

The European Union, for its part, called on all parties on Monday to “exercise restraint” in Taiwan.

The Chinese army had described these exercises as “serious warnings” in the face of “separatist actions” and as a “legitimate and necessary operation to safeguard the sovereignty of the State.”

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• Beijing launches military maneuvers around Taiwan

“Irrational behavior”

These maneuvers came a few days after a speech by Taiwanese President Lai Ching-te, whose remarks are regularly considered by Beijing as pro-independence.

“The government will continue to defend the democratic and free constitutional system, protect a democratic Taiwan and safeguard national security,” Mr. Lai said on Facebook on Monday.

“Taiwanese independence and peace in the Taiwan Strait [which separates the island territory from mainland China, editor's note] are two completely incompatible things,” warned In the afternoon Mao Ning, a spokesperson for the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

For its part, the Taiwanese Ministry of Defense had denounced these maneuvers, seeing them as “irrational and provocative behavior” by Beijing.

Without making a direct link with the maneuvers, the Taiwanese coast guard announced on Monday that it had arrested a Chinese national after a possible “intrusion” on Kinmen, an island controlled by the Taiwanese authorities but located in the immediate vicinity of the Chinese coast.

On Monday afternoon in Taipei, the Taiwanese capital, AFP journalists saw several Taiwanese army vehicles, equipped with machine guns, patrolling near Songshan airport, which is also a military air base.

Relations tense

Beijing-Taipei ties have been execrable since 2016 and the arrival of Tsai Ing-wen as Taiwanese president, then of her successor, Lai Ching-te, in 2024.

China regularly accuses the Taiwanese authorities of wanting to deepen the cultural divide between the island and the continent. In response, it has notably stepped up its military activity around the territory.

Before Monday's, Beijing had organized three series of large-scale maneuvers in the past two years, using its air force and navy to encircle the island territory.

Lai Ching-te pledged on Thursday to “resist Chinese annexation” of the island and “encroachment on [its] sovereignty.”

Beijing responded by warning that the Taiwanese president's “provocations” would bring “disaster” to his people.

The disputes between Beijing and Taipei date back to the long civil war that pitted communist fighters led by Mao Zedong against the nationalist forces of Chiang Kai-shek.

Defeated by the communists, who founded the People's Republic of China on October 1, 1949, the nationalists took refuge with many civilians in Taiwan, one of the only parts of the national territory then not conquered by Mao Zedong's forces.