Taipei:

Taiwan’s new president said Sunday he was still ready to work with China, despite this week’s military drills around the self-ruled island.

Three days after Lai Ching-te was sworn in, Chinese warships and fighter jets encircled Taiwan in drills that China said were a test of its ability to seize the island.

During the two-day drills, China vowed that “independence forces” would be left “with their heads broken and blood flowing”.

Lai told reporters on Sunday that he wanted Taiwan and China to “jointly shoulder the important responsibility of regional stability”.

“I also look forward to enhancing mutual understanding and reconciliation through exchanges and cooperation with China… and moving towards a position of peace and common prosperity,” he said at an event in Taipei.

Communications between China and Taiwan were severed in 2016 after former president Tsai Ing-wen took office, pledging to defend Taiwan’s sovereignty.

Lai, who comes from the same Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) as Tsai, has vowed to maintain her policies of building up Taiwan’s defence capabilities while remaining open to dialogue with China and strengthening relations with the island’s partners — particularly the United States.

But China said Lai’s inaugural speech on Monday amounted to calls for independence, “pushing our compatriots in Taiwan into a perilous situation of war and danger”.

“Every time ‘Taiwan independence’ provokes us, we will push our countermeasures one step further, until the complete reunification of the motherland is achieved,” defence ministry spokesman Wu Qian said on Friday.

Wen-Ti Sung, a nonresident fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Global China Hub, told AFP that Lai would “hold firm to project resolve” after this first interaction between his administration and Beijing.

“However, he will no doubt be looking to leverage other international partners and friends to help facilitate more back-channel communications with Beijing,” Sung said.

On Sunday night, the United States’ de facto embassy announced that Republican Congressman Michael McCaul will lead a delegation to visit Taiwan from Sunday to Thursday “to discuss US-Taiwan relations, regional security, trade and investment”.

Taiwan’s presidential spokesperson Wen Lii said the delegation will be meeting with Lai on Monday.

The visit “conveys an expression of support for the new administration and the people of Taiwan through concrete actions,” he said.

– Intimidation tactics –

Since 2016, China has upped military and political pressures on Taiwan, and its naval vessels, drones and warplanes maintain a near-daily presence around the island.

The dispute has long made the Taiwan Strait one of the world’s most dangerous flashpoints.

During this week’s drills, fighter jets loaded with live ammunition scrambled towards targets and bombers formed formations to combine with warships to simulate “strikes against important targets”, China’s state broadcaster CCTV said.

Tong Zhen, from China’s Academy of Military Sciences, told state news agency Xinhua that the drills “mainly targeted the ringleaders and political centre of ‘Taiwan independence’, and involved simulated precision strikes on key political and military targets”.

Meng Xiangqing, a professor from Beijing-based National Defense University, told Xinhua that the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) vessels “were getting closer to the island than ever before”.

“The drills have shown that we can control that eastern area,” Meng said, referring to the direction considered by the PLA the most likely from which external intervention could come.

The United States, which does not diplomatically recognise Taiwan but is its biggest ally and arms supplier, on Saturday urged China to “act with restraint”.

Experts say Beijing is seeking to intimidate and exhaust Taiwan’s military.

On Sunday, two days after the drills ended, Taiwan’s defence ministry reported that seven Chinese aircraft, 14 naval vessels and four coast guard ships were “operating around” the island in a 24-hour period ending at 06:00 am (2200 GMT Saturday).

The ministry also said in a separate statement that it had found a cardboard box containing political slogans that it said was left by Beijing on a dock in Erdan, an islet part of Taiwan-controlled Kinmen next to China’s Xiamen.

The defence ministry shrugged off the incident, saying it suspected it was intended to create online chatter.

– ‘Major test’ –

Lai’s first week in office also saw tens of thousands of people take to the streets of Taipei to protest bills proposed by the opposition Kuomintang — regarded as pro-Beijing — and the Taiwan People’s Party.

DPP lawmakers have been accusing the opposition of fast-tracking the bills — which expand parliament’s powers — without proper consultation.

With Lai’s DPP no longer holding the majority in parliament, his party will likely face challenges in passing his administration’s policies, such as bolstering the defence budget.

“The pressures are coming fast and early for the Lai administration,” Amanda Hsiao of the International Crisis Group told AFP.

“This is going to be a major test of their ability to manage multiple challenges, domestic and external, at the same time,”

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

Ground staff members transport missiles near a Taiwan Air Force Mirage 2000-5 aircraft at Hsinchu Air Base, in Hsinchu, Taiwan.
| Photo Credit: Reuters

Taiwan scrambled jets and put missile, naval and land units on alert on May 23 over Chinese military exercises being conducted around the self-governing island democracy where a new President took office this week.

China’s military said its two-day exercises around Taiwan were punishment for separatist forces seeking independence. Beijing claims the island is part of China’s national territory and the People’s Liberation Army sends navy ships and warplanes into the Taiwan Strait and other areas around the island almost daily to wear down Taiwan’s defences and seek to intimidate its people, who firmly back their de facto independence.

China’s “irrational provocation has jeopardised regional peace and stability,” the island’s Defence Ministry said. It said Taiwan will seek no conflicts but “will not shy away from one.

“This pretext for conducting military exercises not only does not contribute to peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait, but also shows its hegemonic nature at heart,” the Ministry’s statement said.

In his inauguration address on Monday, Taiwan’s President Lai Ching-te called for Beijing to stop its military intimidation and pledged to “neither yield nor provoke” the mainland Communist Party leadership.

Lai has said he seeks dialogue with Beijing while maintaining Taiwan’s current status and avoiding conflicts that could draw in the island’s chief ally the U.S. and other regional partners such as Japan and Australia.

“The People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) Eastern Theater Command said the land, navy and air exercises around Taiwan are meant to test the navy and air capabilities of the PLA units, as well as their joint strike abilities to hit targets and win control of the battlefield,” the command said on its official Weibo account.

“This is also a powerful punishment for the separatist forces seeking independence’ and a serious warning to external forces for interference and provocation,” the statement said.

The PLA also released a map of the intended exercise area, which surrounds Taiwan’s main island at five different points, as well as places such as Matsu and Kinmen, outlying islands that are closer to the Chinese mainland than Taiwan.

While China has termed the exercises as punishment for Taiwan’s election result, the Democratic Progressive Party has now run the island’s government for more than a decade, although the pro-China Nationalist Party took a one-seat majority in the Parliament.

Speaking in Australia, Marine Corps Lt. Gen. Stephen Sklenka, the deputy commander of the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, called on Asia-Pacific nations to condemn the Chinese military exercises.

“There’s no surprise whenever there’s an action that highlights Taiwan in the international sphere the Chinese feel compelled to make some kind of form of statement,” Mr. Sklenka told the National Press Club of Australia in the capital Canberra, in a reference to Monday’s Presidential inauguration.

“Just because we expect that behavior doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t condemn it, and we need to condemn it publicly. And it needs to come from us, but it also needs to come, I believe, from nations in the region. It’s one thing when the United States condemns the Chinese, but it has a far more powerful effect, I believe, when it comes from nations within this region,” Mr. Sklenka added.

Japan’s top envoy weighed in while visiting the U.S., saying Japan and Taiwan share values and principles, including freedom, democracy, basic rights and rule of law.

“(Taiwan) is our extremely important partner that we have close economic relations and exchanges of people, and is our precious friend,” Foreign Minister Yoko Kamikawa told reporters in Washington, where she held talks with Secretary of State Antony Blinken.

She said the two Ministers discussed Taiwan and the importance of the Taiwan Strait, one of the world’s most important waterways for shipping, remaining peaceful.