China held large-scale military exercises around Taiwan and its outlying islands on Monday, in what it called a warning against Taiwan’s independence.
China’s Defense Ministry said the exercises were a response to Taiwanese President Lai Ching-te’s refusal to give in to Beijing’s demands that Taiwan recognize itself as part of the People’s Republic of China under Communist Party rule.
Taiwan’s Defense Ministry called the exercises provocative and said its forces were ready to respond.
Spokesman for the People’s Liberation Army’s Eastern Theater Command, Navy Capt. Li Xi, said the navy, air force and missile corps were all mobilized for the exercises. “This is a major warning to those who support Taiwan’s independence and a sign of our determination to safeguard our national sovereignty,” Li said in a statement broadcast on the service’s public television channel.
Taiwan was a Japanese colony before being unified with China at the end of World War II. It split in 1949 when Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalists fled to the island, while Mao Zedong’s Communists took power on the mainland.
President Lai took office in May, continuing the eight-year rule of the Democratic Progressive Party which rejects China’s demand to recognize Taiwan as part of China. China regularly declares that Taiwan’s independence is a “dead end” and that annexation by Beijing is a historical inevitability.
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