China starts military movements after Taiwan leader’s first foreign trip

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China has started large naval and air movements over an area spanning hundreds of kilometres off its coast and in the western Pacific, indicating that its latest military exercise aimed at Taiwan could differ from two previous rounds this year.

China’s civil aviation authorities issued a notice partially restricting airspace along its east and south-eastern coast between Shanghai and Guangdong province until December 11, a move indicating imminent military activity in that airspace.

Separately, Taiwan’s defence ministry said it had observed naval flotillas from the People’s Liberation Army’s northern, eastern and southern theatre commands as well as from the coastguard entering waters around Taiwan and the western Pacific.

A Taiwanese official and one official from a neighbouring country said there were close to 100 Chinese ships active in the area.

“Both the scale and the geographic distribution of these preparations point to drills that would differ significantly from the ‘Joint Sword 2024 A’ and ‘B’ exercises,” said a senior Taiwanese official, referring to Chinese manoeuvres in May and October.

China claims Taiwan as part of its territory and threatens to annex the island with military force if Taipei refuses to submit under its control indefinitely.

In recent years, Beijing has staged increasingly frequent military exercises that Taiwanese and international experts say aim to intimidate Taipei and hone the skills the PLA would need to blockade or invade the country.

After Lai Ching-te took office as Taiwan’s president in May, Beijing organised a military exercise it called “Joint Sword 2024 A”. China described it as “punishment” for what it calls Lai’s separatism. In October, it held a sequel, Joint Sword 2024 B.

Lai returned home on Friday from his first overseas trip as president, during which he visited Taiwan’s diplomatic allies in the Pacific and made stopovers in Hawaii and the US territory of Guam, as has been practice for many years.

China denounced the trip and threatened to counter with “resolute measures” to safeguard its sovereignty, a phrase understood as code for military exercises.

While the previous drills explicitly simulated a blockade and invasion, they were centred relatively narrowly on Taiwan itself and involved only the PLA’s Eastern Theater Command. The preparations seen on Monday, which involved other commands, appeared to indicate something broader.

Military experts said Beijing might be practising so-called anti-access, area-denial operations, focused on keeping the US out of the region.

Under the Taiwan Relations Act, Washington considers any effort to determine Taiwan’s future by non-peaceful means as an issue of grave concern to the US.

The law commits Washington to providing Taiwan with defensive weapons and to maintaining US capacity to resist coercion that would jeopardise Taiwan’s security.