Another 27 aircraft and seven vessels were detected in the ADIZ the following day.<\/p>\n
As the U.S., South Korea, and Canada held joint drills in the Yellow Sea the previous week, China conducted what observers said were the largest-ever maneuvers<\/a> with an aircraft carrier in the Western Pacific to date, deploying the Shandong aircraft carrier to conduct joint sea and air training. An additional 20 warships sailed through the Bashi Channel and the Miyako Strait \u2014 bodies of water separating Taiwan from the Philippines and Japan, respectively \u2014 into the Pacific. Experts said the exercises were likely simulating a blockade.<\/p>\n \u201cChina does not just have the equipment. They’re also trying to make their equipment work,\u201d said Kitsch Liao, assistant director of the Atlantic Council\u2019s China Hub. \u201cPeople only look at this as political theater and that\u2019s not what the Chinese are seeing this as. [Taiwan\u2019s] Han Kuang exercise<\/a> is a political theater. [China is] serious about this\u2026Theirs is real.\u201d<\/p>\n The PLA has considerably increased military pressure around Taiwan since 2019, but activity has sharply risen since a visit to the island democracy by former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi<\/a> in August 2022, when China launched large-scale exercises that lasted several days. More large-scale drills followed a meeting between Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen (\u8521\u82f1\u6587 C\u00e0i Y\u012bngw\u00e9n) and U.S. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy in April, and Vice President and the recent transit of presidential front-runner William Lai (\u8cf4\u6df8\u5fb7 L\u00e0i Q\u012bngd\u00e9) through the U.S. in August.<\/p>\n Since last year, crossings of the unofficial median line \u2014 which China does not recognize \u2014 have become regular occurrences. According to a data set<\/a> kept by independent researcher Ben Lewis, a total of 1,737 sorties were recorded in Taiwan\u2019s ADIZ in 2022, up from 972 in 2021. Over 1,200 have been recorded in 2023 so far.<\/p>\n \u201cThe Chinese are very clearly no longer abiding by the median line. So you could think of this as kind of a rolling demonstration. They do kick off at times of political importance, but you don’t see any of that [with these exercises],\u201d said Raymond Kuo, the director of the Rand Corporation\u2019s Hu Taiwan Policy Initiative.<\/p>\n China\u2019s frequent use of gray-zone tactics \u2014 including ADIZ violations, crossings of the median line, and encirclement exercises \u2014 to express its claimed sovereignty over Taiwan has caused \u201ca sense of frustration\u201d in the United States, Kuo said.<\/p>\n \u201cThere is also caution by the U.S. military to say, \u2018Taiwan, don’t rock the boat.\u2019 Because it\u2019s not something that the U.S. can actually respond to,\u201d Kuo said.<\/p>\n Taiwan\u2019s Ministry of Defense has called on China<\/a> to stop its \u201ccontinuous harassment\u201d and \u201cprovocative\u201d actions, which undermine the status quo and cause heightened tensions in the strait.<\/p>\n The heightened activity around Taiwan comes at a time of increased tensions in the Pacific, and moves by the U.S. and its allies that China views as affronts to its sovereignty. In addition to the joint drills in the Yellow Sea, U.S. and Canadian warships sailed through the Taiwan Strait earlier this month. In late August, the U.S. approved a new $500 million arms sale<\/a> to Taiwan shortly after Lai\u2019s U.S. stopover.<\/p>\n The Global Times, a nationalist Chinese state-owned tabloid, wrote<\/a> on September 17 that U.S. actions were \u201cfurther escalating tensions in China\u2019s surrounding areas.\u201d<\/p>\n After Foreign Minister W\u00e1ng Y\u00ec \u738b\u6bc5 met with National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan earlier this month, China\u2019s readout stressed<\/a> that \u201cthe Taiwan issue is the number-one insurmountable red line in U.S.-China relations\u201d and that the United States \u201cmust abide by the three joint communiques and carry out its promise to not support \u2018Taiwan independence.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n Lyle Goldstein, the director of Asia Engagement Defense Priorities, a Washington-based think tank, said the current situation in the strait is \u201cincredibly dangerous.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cTrying to defuse the tension and just moving military forces around or seeking new bases to me is putting all our eggs in a deterrence basket. I think that’s wrong. I think we need to do more reassurance and try to defuse the situation before it gets out of hand,\u201d he told The Chin Project.<\/p>\n However, China may still be practicing restraint in an attempt to sway the January 2024 presidential election, Goldstein said, and to offer \u201ca subtle reminder that there is this risk of war.\u201d Last week, as large-scale naval exercises took place near Taiwan, China announced plans for \u201ceconomic integration\u201d<\/a> in Fujian Province with Taiwan as an important part of \u201crealizing China\u2019s complete reunification.\u201d<\/p>\n The combination of military and economic coercion is commonly used by China against Taiwan, but \u201cmight not be as effective as [China] originally intended it to be,\u201d said Crystal Tu (\u675c\u8c9e\u5100 D\u00f9 Zh\u0113ny\u00ed), an assistant research fellow at the Institute for National Defense and Security Research, a military think tank in Taiwan.<\/p>\n Recent polls have found growing confidence<\/a> in Taiwan\u2019s military capabilities as well as support<\/a> for U.S. military aid to Taiwan.<\/p>\n Recent flight paths of PLA craft operating around Taiwan show more crossings of the median line as well as a heightened presence in the southeastern ADIZ and some aircraft moving partly around Taiwan\u2019s perimeter, indicating that the PLA may be testing new capabilities or exercises to keep aircraft active for longer periods of time, said Tu.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s put a lot of pressure on our airports. Because of their constant presence on the southwest corners, it might disrupt their scheduled trainings,\u201d Tu said.<\/p>\n In August, the New York Times reported<\/a> that Taiwan has stopped deploying its own fighter jets each time Chinese flights are detected, \u201cand now does so only when the flights appear more threatening.\u201d In 2020, Taiwan spent nearly 9 percent of its defense budget monitoring Chinese flights and requested an additional $54 million for that purpose earlier this year.<\/p>\n China has over 1,300 combat-ready fighter jets, while Taiwan has just 300. U.S. deliveries of fighter jets and other equipment to Taiwan have lagged, though a recent sale of equipment<\/a>, which includes infrared search and track systems for F-16 jets, is expected to \u201cgreatly improve the effectiveness of air operations.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThe Chinese want to make sure Taiwan\u2019s pilots are stressed out, tired, that their budgets are spent in this way,\u201d Goldstein said. \u201cIf you really want to accomplish surprise against your adversary, you start to do regular sets of large-scale exercises against your adversary and create a false sense of security.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The latest military exercises and gray-zone warfare around Taiwan come at a time of high political importance for China, the U.S., and Taiwan, and Beijing is not messing around. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":19837,"featured_media":286104,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"episode_type":"","audio_file":"","cover_image":"","cover_image_id":"","duration":"","filesize":"","date_recorded":"","explicit":"","block":"","filesize_raw":"","footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[12902],"tags":[14425,14045,13097,14681,13795,15720],"column":[],"class":[],"coauthors":[17881],"acf":[],"la_post_categories":{"politics-and-current-affairs":"Politics & Current Affairs"},"la_post_tags":{"access":"Access","military":"military","navy":"navy","pla":"PLA","taiwan":"Taiwan","taiwan-strait":"taiwan strait"},"content_writeup":{"rendered":" Dear reader: <\/em><\/p>\n The U.S. government has accused Beijing<\/strong> of spending billions each year on a global disinformation campaign. The Chinese Foreign Ministry retorted by calling the U.S. an \u201cEmpire of Lies (\u8c0e\u8a00\u5e1d\u56fd hu\u01cengy\u00e1n d\u00ecgu\u00f3), which is our Word of the Day. (Scroll down to the News Briefing section for links to the source documents.)<\/p>\n This year, China\u2019s Golden Week holiday<\/strong> to celebrate Friday\u2019s Mid-Autumn Festival and October 1 National Day began on September 29 and lasts till October 6, so this will likely be a slow news week. But you can find all the scheduled political and business events for the week in our China Agenda<\/a>.<\/p>\n What does China want? <\/strong>That\u2019s the question we aim to answer, with the help of some of the most informed-on-China people on the planet at our 2023 NEXTChina Conference on November 1 and 2, in New York City. I\u2019ll be there with our whole team and we\u2019d love to see you. Tickets and details here<\/a>.<\/p>\n"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thechinaproject.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/286085"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thechinaproject.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thechinaproject.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thechinaproject.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/19837"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thechinaproject.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=286085"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thechinaproject.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/286085\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thechinaproject.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/286104"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thechinaproject.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=286085"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thechinaproject.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=286085"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thechinaproject.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=286085"},{"taxonomy":"column","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thechinaproject.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/column?post=286085"},{"taxonomy":"class","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thechinaproject.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/class?post=286085"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thechinaproject.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=286085"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/thechinaproject.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/09\/2.png\")
<\/a><\/p>\nExternal factors?<\/h3>\n
Weakening Taiwan\u2019s capabilities<\/h3>\n