Taiwan's new President Lai Ching-te speaks on stage during the inauguration ceremony outside the Presidential office building in Taipei, Taiwan May 20, 2024.Taiwan’s military mobilised its forces and said it was confident it could protect the island, after China started two days of “punishment” drills around Taiwan on Thursday in what it said was a response to “separatist acts”.
Lai has repeatedly offered talks with China but been rebuffed. He says only Taiwan’s people can decide their future, and rejects Beijing’s sovereignty claims. Taiwan’s defence ministry condemned the drills, saying that it had dispatched forces to areas around the island, that its air defences and land-based missile forces were tracking targets, and that it was confident it could protect its territory.
Taiwanese officials had said in the run-up to the inauguration they were keeping watch for Chinese military movements. China last staged large-scale war games near Taiwan in 2023 and 2022. Chinese state media published a map of the drills zones, in five areas all around Taiwan and the islands Taiwan controls near the Chinese coast.
Su Tzu-yun, a research fellow at Taiwan’s top military think tank, the Institute for National Defence and Security Research, said that although the drills would only last two days, the scope is large relative to previous exercises, as they included Taiwan’s outlying islands.
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