China’s live-fire military drills are continuing. Regional authorities announced a set of new military drills in the South China Sea and the East China Sea this past weekend, the latest exercises in the wake of House speaker Nancy Pelosi’s recent trip to Taiwan. The new drills have come on the heels of some particularly brazen activities by the People’s Liberation Army.
The latest drills are taking place in two areas. The Maritime Safety Administration of Guangdong announced yesterday that there would be military exercises in China’s Pearl River Estuary, and the Zhejiang Maritime Safety Administration announced live-fire drills in the East China Sea for Monday, according to RFI Chinese.
It’s not clear exactly what the exercises will entail, as the two agencies only warned ships in the area that there would be military activity.
An initial round of Chinese live-fire military drills — which included the test of a missile that flew over Taiwanese territory — concluded in early August. However, the most recent announcement is indicative of what some experts have declared a new status quo in the Taiwan Strait, where a heightened level of Chinese military activity could mask preparations for an eventual invasion.
Last week, a Chinese warship reportedly monitored Taiwan’s own missile tests in the area around an island off Taiwan’s east coast, a Taiwanese military source told the country’s national news agency CNA. In addition to launching missiles into the waters east of Taiwan, China’s military sent three missile destroyers and a reconnaissance ship to the area after the end of China’s initial military drills following the Pelosi trip, CNA also reported.
PHOTOS: Chinese Navy
The U.S. and Taiwan have both described China’s reaction to Pelosi’s visit as an overreaction. In an interview with CNN last week, Washington’s envoy in Beijing, Nicholas Burns, called the Chinese reaction “a manufactured crisis by the government of Beijing,” adding that “it was an overreaction.”
A spokesperson for China’s foreign ministry fired back on Twitter: “Who’s overreacting? Who’s the agent of instability? Certainly NOT China.”
Who’s overreacting? Who’s the agent of instability? Certainly NOT China. We didn’t send warships & military jets halfway across the world to the US doorstep. Any “crisis” is on Washington, not Beijing. https://t.co/QBvQUE5woN
— CHINA MFA Spokesperson 中国外交部发言人 (@MFA_China) August 22, 2022