#China holds military exercises as US boosts relations with Taiwan

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J15 fighter jets on China’s sole operational aircraft carrier, the Liaoning, during a drill at sea in 2018
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China conducted rare military drills in four regions, including the Yellow Sea and the South China Sea, as the US envoy to Taiwan attended a military memorial service with Taiwan’s president.

Maritime safety administrations issued notices last weekend about the military exercises and the People’s Liberation Army said drills had been completed in one area, the South China Morning Post reported Monday.

The exercises occurred in two places in the South China Sea, one in the East China Sea, one in the Yellow Sea and another in the Bohai Gulf off mainland China’s east coast and just north of the Yellow Sea.

Many of the areas were cordoned off to regular marine traffic during the exercises.

A section of the Bohai Gulf will be off limits until the end of September.

Beijing also held military drills near Taiwan earlier this month “to safeguard sovereignty” as US Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar met with President Tsai Ing-wen, becoming the highest-ranking US official to visit the island in four decades.

China, apparently irked by the visit, sent fighter jets into the Taiwan Strait.

US envoy to Taiwan William Brent Christensen appeared with Tsai on Sunday during a memorial service to honor soldiers killed by Chinese bombing in 1958 on Kinmen, a Taiwan-controlled island near China’s coast.

The US cut off official ties in 1979 with Taiwan, which China views as a rogue province, but the Trump administration has been trying to bolster relations with the island as tensions between Washington and the Chinese Communist Party intensify over trade issues, the coronavirus pandemic and China’s treatment of pro-democracy protesters in Hong Kong.

Collin Koh, a research fellow from the S Rajaratnam School of International Studies at Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University, said China is trying to make a not-so-subtle point with the military exercises.

“Operationally, it’s to showcase the PLA’s ability to carry out major mobilization of forces for training across multiple sea areas — which also highlights that the PLA isn’t affected in any way by the pandemic,” he told the South China Morning Post.

Song Zhongping, a military expert in Hong Kong, said Beijing was trying to prove that it could mobilize quickly in different areas.

“The Chinese military needs to put a special focus on the Bohai Gulf, which nears Beijing, the capital, so must be guarded strictly,” Song said. “We can aim for peace strategically, but we must have military means to back up this goal.”

The US in July sent two aircraft carriers, the USS Ronald Reagan and the USS Nimitz, into the South China Sea in a show of force, after China had been conducting military drills in the region.