China intensified military exercises near Taiwan on Tuesday, firing long-range rockets into waters around the island. The People’s Liberation Army also sent out new amphibious assault ships while its vessels and aircraft practiced repelling an approaching enemy force, displaying its ability to both strike and isolate the island.
Chinese long-range artillery units fired 27 rockets into waters to the north and southwest of Taiwan that China had earlier declared to be live-fire zones, Gen. Hsieh Jih-sheng, a Taiwanese defense official, told a news conference. China’s main state broadcaster, CCTV, said that the Chinese units unleashed dozens of rockets that struck the sea to the north of the island.
China’s military said its destroyers, frigates and fighter-bombers operated in nearby areas, where they tested their ability to spot and attack enemy aircraft, ships and submarines. It warned ships and aircraft not involved in the drills to stay away from seven live-fire zones, which were to be in force until the evening.
Taiwan’s Ministry of National Defense said 11 Chinese navy ships and eight coast guard vessels came within 24 miles of Taiwan’s coast, a zone within which Taiwan enforces its laws. The ministry said Taiwanese forces responded by issuing radio calls for them to leave.
The two-day exercises, called “Justice Mission 2025,” had started a day earlier, when Chinese bombers, fighter jets, warships, drones and missile units made a show of force that was accompanied by combative rhetoric and martial videos online.
China’s actions appeared intended as a warning that the People’s Liberation Army was honing its abilities to cut off Taiwan from any outside efforts to come to the island’s aid in a conflict, said Chieh Chung, a researcher at the Institute for National Defense and Security Research in Taipei, an organization supported by the Taiwanese ministry of defense.
Several of the exclusion zones “appear designed to block an advance toward Taiwan by Japanese Self-Defense Forces or U.S. forces stationed in Japan,” Mr. Chieh said in an interview. “The position and large scale of these zones project a stance saying ‘I will keep out foreign forces’.”
The exercises came after the administration of President Trump released details of more than $11 billion in proposed arms sales to Taiwan.
The rockets were fired by Chinese long-range artillery units on the coast of Fujian, the mainland province opposite Taiwan, and landed outside the 24-mile boundary, Taiwan’s Ministry of National Defense said.
Taiwan’s coast guard said the Chinese units used PCH191 launchers, a nimble, relatively cheap weapon that China has made in larger numbers as an alternative to bigger, more costly missile launchers. China’s military released a video that also showed one of the launchers, which is pulled by a truck, firing a volley of ammunition, which the video said landed in a patch of sea off Taiwan. In a real war, Taiwan may have difficulty intercepting rockets launched from such mobile units, military experts have said.
“They can fire basically anywhere along the coast to range most, if not all, of Taiwan,” Joshua Arostegui, the research director of the China Landpower Studies Center at the U.S. Army War College and author of a paper about the PCH191 launcher, said in an earlier interview.
China’s military said it also sent amphibious assault ships, other warships and flying drones to the east of Taiwan, where their drills included “precision strike operations, and seizing and controlling key ports.” This is the direction from which the United States or its allies might approach in an attempt to defend Taiwan.
China’s leaders have for decades said that Taiwan is their country’s lost territory, and that they may use armed force if prospects for peaceful unification evaporate. Since 2022, China has staged six major exercises near Taiwan to demonstrate its anger at the island’s government, which has called Beijing a threat to the island’s democracy and self-rule.
The current exercises ended an eight-month stretch of relative calm in the Taiwan Strait. With the abrupt resumption of drills, China’s leader, Xi Jinping, is apparently offering a sharp reminder to Taiwan, its potential allies and a domestic audience of China’s own people that the People’s Liberation Army still stands ready to attack, if ordered.
“External forces have recently crossed the line repeatedly on the Taiwan issue, recklessly attempting to embolden and encourage ‘Taiwan independence’ separatist forces,” Zhang Xiaogang, a spokesman for China’s Ministry of National Defense, said in comments issued late on Monday.
The exercises came only a week after Mr. Xi appointed a new commander for the Chinese military’s Eastern Theater, the area that includes Taiwan, and appeared to be realistic training for a possible attack or blockade of the island, Ben Lewis, the founder of P.L.A. Tracker, a website that monitors Chinese military activities, said in an interview.
“It seemed to me that the Eastern Theater Command wanted to test and also demonstrate its ability to rapidly surge forces forward in order to, as they described, seize comprehensive control of sea and air domains,” Mr. Lewis said. “They were able to very quickly shift from their kind of routine posture to an exercise or an attack posture.”
China also may be trying to intimidate Japan, where the new prime minister, Sanae Takaichi, has indicated that her country could come to Taiwan’s aid if China attacked it, and has stood firm despite China’s warnings and boycotts.
Chinese leaders appeared to be trying to demonstrate “that Japan would and could do nothing” to defend Taiwan, said Yun Sun, the director of the China Program at the Stimson Center in Washington.
“I actually think the Japan angle is the primary driver of China’s decision on the military exercise,” she said. “China has backed itself into a corner by accepting nothing less than Takaichi’s formal withdrawal of her comment. That is not going to happen.”
Mr. Xi also appears to have calculated that two days of exercises will not disrupt relations with Mr. Trump ahead of a planned summit in April, several experts said. At the Beijing summit, Mr. Xi may try to persuade Mr. Trump to declare opposition to Taiwanese independence, or at least restate the longstanding U.S. position that it does not support moves toward independence, said Bonnie S. Glaser, the managing director of the Indo-Pacific program at the German Marshall Fund of the United States.
When asked about the exercises during a news conference on Monday, Mr. Trump appeared unperturbed.
“They’ve been doing that for 20, 25 years,” he said.
Chris Buckley, the chief China correspondent for The Times, reports on China and Taiwan from Taipei, focused on politics, social change and security and military issues.
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