China carried out “simulated attacks” near Taiwan: What is Operation Joint Sword?

China launched three days of military exercises around Taiwan on Saturday to put pressure on its authorities in response to a meeting between the island’s president and a senior US official that angered Beijing.

Here are some of the elements that are known about the operation called “Joint Sword”.

What is a device?

China deployed a large military force around Taiwan as a “serious warning against collusion between separatist forces seeking ‘Taiwan independence’ and outside forces,” a Chinese military spokesman warned. shi yi.

According to Chinese state television CCTV, the maneuvers include patrols and “simulated pinpoint strikes” on “key targets” to “create a complete containment and encirclement” of the island.

According to the Chinese press, the device includes dozens of J-18 and J-10C fighter jets, anti-submarine aircraft, PHL-191 rocket launchers and YJ-12B land-based anti-ship missiles.

The Taiwan Ministry of Defense spotted 11 Chinese warships and 70 aircraft around the island on Sunday, after the same number of ships and 71 aircraft were spotted a day earlier.

What is China looking for?

China consider the island Taiwanwith 23 million inhabitants, as one of its provinces that has not yet been able to reunite with the rest of its territory since the end of the Chinese Civil War in 1949.

Beijing opposes any official contact between Taipei and foreign governments.

Following Wednesday’s meeting in California between Taiwan’s President Tsai Ingwen and Speaker of the United States House of Representatives, Kevin McCarthyBeijing has promised a tough response.

The military maneuvers are part of a broader “pressure on Taiwan” campaign, Ja Yang Chong, a professor of political science at the National University of Singapore, told AFP.

In his opinion, “these high-level meetings allow Beijing to blame Taipei, Washington and others.”

Because right now?

China waited for Tsai’s return to Taiwan and the end of the French President’s visit to China, Emmanuel Macronand President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyento start the operation “Joint Sword”.

According to James Char, an expert on the Chinese military at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, this indicates that China is trying to “reactivate” relations with Europe.

But a military operation against Taiwan “would damage this diplomatic opening,” he warns.

What are the differences from previous maneuvers?

These exercises are reminiscent of those held in August 2022 in response to a visit to the island Nancy PelosiMcCarthy’s predecessor at the head of the House of Representatives, the second American authority in the line of presidential succession.

Beijing carried out live-shot maneuvers ten kilometers off the coast of Taiwan as part of a similar week-long encirclement campaign.

This time, China announced a live fire exercise off the coast of Fujian (East), the province before Taiwan.

However, “Joint Sword” It doesn’t appear to “be on the scale of what we saw during Pelosi’s visit” to the island that Beijing claims to be its territory, said Manoj Kevalramani, a China expert at the Takshashila Institute in Bangalore.

According to Su Tzu-yun, a military expert at the Taiwan National Defense and Security Research Institute, the economic situation after the three years of the Covid-19 pandemic and Taiwan’s strategic importance may have played a role.

“Restoring Taiwan’s air and sea routes this year is very important for the economic recovery of neighboring countries and China itself, so military exercises should not be intensified,” he told AFP.

(AFP).