The latest large-scale Chinese military and coastguard exercises around Taiwan mark a significant escalation in its bullying of the independent island which Beijing regards as a province which must be “reunified” with the mainland. It has not ruled out using force to do so, and President Xi Jinping continues to wave this popular nationalist flag, as he also did in his response to Trump’s tariffs.
Last week China sent 76 aircraft and over 20 navy and coastguard ships, including the Shandong carrier group, to positions around Taiwan in exercises that included simulated landings and attacks on infrastructure.
Their purpose was unambiguous. The People’s Liberation Army (PLA) said its forces were practising “seizing comprehensive control, strikes on sea and land targets and blockade operations”. The coastguard called the drills “concrete actions to exercise legitimate jurisdiction and control over the island in accordance with the one-China principle.”
The PLA sends aircraft and ships into the airspace and waters close to Taiwan almost daily and has also held several larger drills near Taiwan since President Lai Ching-te took office last May. He has taken steps to strengthen Taiwan’s defence posture, holding the country’s most serious civil defence mobilisation drills in decades.
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Critics of the US administration warn that its policy of “strategic ambiguity” in defence of Taiwan, an unwillingness to say what it would do if China invades, may under President Trump, be emboldening Beijing. Ambiguous remarks about Taiwan’s hugely important semiconductor industry, implying its dominance is a strategic “bargaining chip”, have fuelled anxiety in Taipei, as has the US president’s lukewarm support for Ukrainian sovereignty.
Trump’s toleration of the idea that great powers should be given free rein in their own zones of influence, reflected in his own designs on Greenland, Panama and Canada, sends out not just a message of strategic realignment by the US but also one of weakness to Beijing.
