TAIPEI (Taiwan News) — In a government assessment of China’s "Joint Sword-2024B" exercises around Taiwan, a senior security official said on Thursday (Oct. 17) that Beijing is building capacity to turn drills into a full-out attack.
The People's Liberation Army (PLA) on Monday held drills around Taiwan. China’s foreign ministry said they were a warning to independence forces following President Lai Ching-te’s (賴清德) National Day speech on Oct. 10.
China is “increasing the building up of their capacity to turn military exercises into a conflict,” the Taiwanese official told Reuters, requesting anonymity to speak more frankly.
China “approached very close to Taiwan” and “increased their pressure on Taiwan and squeezed Taiwan's response time,” said the official. “This drill presented more of a threat than ever before to Taiwan.”
Taiwan said a record 153 Chinese aircraft were spotted in the most recent drills. An “unprecedented” 25 Chinese navy and coast guard ships also neared Taiwan's 24-nautical mile contiguous zone, the official added.
Taiwan's defense ministry on Thursday said China currently carries out three to four “joint combat readiness patrols” around the country a month, per Reuters.
Furthermore, the official said that although China did not fire missiles toward Taiwan, it practiced missile launches.
Defense Minister Wellington Koo (顧立雄) has said that as China’s military drills around Taiwan increase, it is becoming harder to discern when Beijing might be transitioning from a training exercise to war. Koo said China has verified its ability to attack Taiwan in various ways, and Taiwan needs to test its ability to respond to a “potential sudden contingency.”
“We must consider how we differentiate between peacetime and wartime,” Ko added. Taiwan’s reaction time to an emergency "cannot be as long as imagined in the past.”
