BEIJING/TAIPEI — A furious China launched “punishment” drills around Taiwan on Thursday in what it said was a response to “separatist acts,” sending up heavily armed warplanes and staging mock attacks as state media denounced newly inaugurated President Lai Ching-te.

The exercises, in the Taiwan Strait and around groups of Taiwan-controlled islands that sit next to the Chinese coast, come just three days after Mr. Lai took office, a man Beijing detests as a “separatist.”

China, which views democratically governed Taiwan as its own territory, has denounced Mr. Lai’s inauguration speech on Monday, in which he called on China to stop its threats and said the two sides of the strait were “not subordinate to each other.”

On Tuesday, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi called Mr. Lai “disgraceful”.

Mr. 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.

The Eastern Theatre Command of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) said it had started joint military drills, involving the army, navy, air force and rocket force, in areas around Taiwan at 7:45 a.m. (2345 GMT).

The drills are being conducted in the Taiwan Strait, the north, south and east of Taiwan, as well as areas around the Taiwan-controlled islands of Kinmen, Matsu, Wuqiu and Dongyin, the command said in a statement.

Chinese state media said China sent out dozens of fighter jets carrying live missiles, and conducted mock strikes, along with warships, of high-value military targets.

The drills, dubbed “Joint Sword – 2024A”, are scheduled to last for two days. However, unlike a similar “Joint Sword” exercise in April last year, these drills are tagged “A,” opening the door to potential follow-ups.

Taiwan’s defense ministry condemned the drills, saying that it had dispatched forces to areas around the island, that its air defenses and land-based missile forces were tracking targets, and that it was confident it could protect its territory.

“The launch of military exercises on this occasion not only does not contribute to the peace and stability of the Taiwan Strait, it also highlights (China’s) militaristic mentality,” the ministry said.

Taiwan’s presidential office expressed regret that China was threatening the island’s democratic freedoms and regional peace and stability with its “unilateral military provocations” but said people could rest assured Taiwan could ensure its security.

China’s state broadcaster CCTV said Mr. Lai’s inauguration speech was “extremely harmful” and China’s countermeasures are “legitimate, legal and necessary.”

Mr. Lai’s speech was a confession of a desire for Taiwan independence and undermined peace and stability across the strait, it said.

Taiwan’s future can only be decided by China’s 1.4 billion people, not just Taiwan’s 23 million people, it added.

NO SURPRISE
A senior Taiwan official, speaking anonymously given the sensitivity of the matter, told Reuters that the drills are part of a scenario Taiwan had anticipated and that the island’s government had a “comprehensive grasp” of Chinese military movements.

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.

The drills focus on joint sea-air combat-readiness patrols, precision strikes on key targets, and integrated operations inside and outside the island chain to test the “joint real combat capabilities” of the forces, China’s military said.

“This is also a strong punishment for the separatist acts of Taiwan independence forces and a stern warning against the interference and provocation by external forces,” the command added.

Chinese state media published a map of the drill zones, in five areas all around Taiwan and the islands Taiwan controls near the Chinese coast. Taiwanese officials told Reuters those areas were outside Taiwan’s contiguous zone, which is 24 nautical miles from the main island’s coast.

One of the officials said China has not announced any no-fly zones, nor has Taiwan observed any large-scale movements of China’s ground and rocket forces.

Su Tzu-yun, a research fellow at Taiwan’s top military think tank, the Institute for National Defense 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.

This is designed to demonstrate China’s ability to control the seas and prevent the involvement of foreign forces, he said.

“The political signals here are greater than the military ones,” he added.

There was no sign of alarm in Taiwan, where people are long used to Chinese military activity.

“The drills will have a short-term psychological impact, but won’t reverse the long-term upward trend of Taiwan stocks,” said Mega International Investment Services vice president Alex Huang.

A central bank official told Reuters the foreign exchange market was operating as normal, with no abnormal entry or exit of foreign capital.

In August 2022, China launched live-fire military exercises around Taiwan immediately after a visit, much condemned by Beijing, by former US House speaker Nancy Pelosi. That series of exercises, the scale of which was unprecedented, lasted for four days, followed by several days of additional drills. — Reuters

JERUSALEM — Already under global pressure over the mounting toll from the war in Gaza, Israel slipped further into international isolation on Wednesday after three European countries broke with their main European Union partners and decided to recognize a Palestinian state.

The move, described by an Israeli government spokesperson as “obscene,” will have little practical impact either in the ruins of Gaza or the occupied West Bank. Squeezed by Israel, the cash-strapped Palestinian Authority in the West Bank struggles to pay its own civil servants.

But it follows a steady build-up of problems, from Washington’s warnings over withholding arms if the war in Gaza continues and sanctions against violent settlers to accusations of genocide before the International Court of Justice (ICJ) and a possible arrest warrant for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu from the International Criminal Court (ICC).

Mr. Netanyahu has long resisted the so-called two-state solution and his resistance has increased since he went into government with a clutch of hard right religious nationalist parties at the end of 2022.

His government remains deeply suspicious of the Palestinian Authority, set up three decades ago under the Oslo interim peace accords, accusing it of hostile actions from paying the families of armed militants killed by Israeli forces to encouraging antisemitism in schoolbooks.

Mr. Netanyahu himself described the decision by the three countries as “a reward for terrorism,” and said a Palestinian state would “try to repeat the massacre of Oct. 7 again and again.”

That comment underlined how bitter the climate surrounding the war in Gaza has become and how distant the prospects of a political settlement based on an independent Palestinian state existing alongside Israel now appear, with peace talks seemingly hopelessly blocked. 

As well as recalling its ambassadors from Oslo, Madrid and Dublin, the foreign ministry summoned the Norwegian, Irish and Spanish ambassadors in Israel to be shown video footage of the attack on Israel by Hamas-led gunmen on Oct. 7.

Laura Blumenfeld, a Middle East analyst at the Johns Hopkins School for Advanced International Studies in Washington, said the three countries’ decision was “diplomatically bold but emotionally tone deaf and unproductive.”

“For Israelis it will increase paranoia, reinforcing Netanyahu’s argument that Israelis stand alone,” she said. “For Palestinians, it falsely raises expectations, without defining a pathway toward realizing legitimate national dreams.”

LONGER TERM PRICE
For Mr. Netanyahu, struggling to hold together a fractious wartime coalition and widely blamed in Israel for the disaster of Oct. 7, Wednesday’s announcement may provide a temporary lift, by reinforcing an image of defiance in the face of a hostile world.

“This really strengthens the narrative which we have been hearing since Day One of this war that in the end, we can only depend on ourselves,” said Yonatan Freeman, an international relations specialist from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. “And I think that this can even assist the Israeli government’s explanation and description of what it’s doing in this war.”

However, the longer term price to Israel of standing in the way of moves towards a Palestinian state may be heavier, starting with the prized goal of normalized relations with Saudi Arabia, Netanyahu’s top foreign policy goal before the attack.

Appearing before a Senate committee on Tuesday, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said that for an agreement to be reached with Saudi Arabia, there would have to be calm in Gaza and a “credible pathway” towards a Palestinian state.

“And it may well be…that, in this moment, Israel is not able or willing to proceed down that pathway,” he added.

For Israelis, the images of Oct. 7, when Hamas-led gunmen rampaged through communities around the Gaza Strip, killing around 1,200 people and taking some 250 hostages into captivity, remain deeply traumatic.

But outside Israel, the images of the suffering in Gaza, where the relentless Israeli campaign launched in response has killed more than 35,000 Palestinians and destroyed much of the heavily built-up enclave, have helped fuel an expanding protest movement on US college campuses and the streets of European cities.

For both the US administration and other governments like Germany that have traditionally been friendly to Israel, the often-angry protests have imposed an increasingly heavy political cost.

Both countries say recognizing a Palestinian state must be the result of negotiations rather than unilateral declarations, and other major European countries like France and Britain also declined to join the trio granting recognition.

But for Alon Liel, a former director general of Israel’s foreign ministry and a critic of Netanyahu’s government, the recognition of Palestine by individual countries was less important than the broader context, including cases against Israel and its leaders at the international tribunals in the Hague.

“If it’s part of a wider move that’s triggering momentum and part of the ICC, ICJ moves, sanctions on settlers and so on, there’s a chance that Israel will notice that the world exists,” he said. — Reuters