Chinas around Taiwan's military exercises enter the second day

China organized military exercises around Taiwan for a second day on Wednesday, sending warships and fighter planes near the island in what Beijing said it was a warning to its president, Lai Ching-te, after calling China a foreign hostile force.

The second day of exercises would focus on Chinese soldiers' capabilities to control and seal the seas and heavens around Taiwan, Colonel Senior Shi Yi, spokesperson for the regional command of the Liberation Army of the Peoples who supervises Taiwan, said in a press release. Colonel Senior Shi also said that In the Eastern China Sea further from the Chinese forces of Taiwan, has held long -distance strikes living on simulated targets of key ports and energy facilities.

Chinese officials said that the demonstration of military power had been provoked by a speech that Mr. Lai delivered on March 13, in which he qualified China as a foreign hostile force and expressed 17 measures which, according to him, would fight Chinese subversion and spying in Taiwan. They understood the restoration of military courts to hear cases against military staff accused of spying. Beijing says Taiwan is its territory, and those responsible describe Mr. Lai as an independence activist fundamentally opposed to their objectives.

On Wednesday, the Taiwans Ministry of National Defense said that 13 Chinese navy ships were deployed on all sides of Taiwan, and eight other Chinese warships, including an aircraft carrier, were about 190 naval miles west of the island. China had also deployed 10 coastal guard ships, which often work closely with the military, around Taiwan and its small islands. Earlier in the day, the Taiwanese Ministry of Defense said that Chinese military planes had piloted 76 outings near Taiwan in the previous 24 hours.

Major-General Meng Xiangqing, a Chinese military scholar who often serves a spokesperson, said the exercises were intended to warn Taiwan for the risks and costs of a real blockage.

A joint blockade would use our large weapons to prevent separatists from Taiwan's independence from escaping and preventing external assistance from entering the island, He said in a video On the website of the new CHINAS soldiers. If Taiwan loses its lines of supply at sea, its interior resources will be quickly exhausted and its social order will descend into chaos.

But despite the ardent Beijing language and a considerable military display, the experts said that the exercises seemed to intimidate Taiwan without going to a broader confrontation. Mr. Lai and his Democratic Progressive Party deny that Taiwan is part of China a key premise in Beijing affirms that the island is its territory and that the civil servants of Beijing have already denounced with vehemence Mr. Lais Speech. Tuesday, Chinese media published caricatures This described Mr. Lai as a parasitic plan.

He tries to get closer to Taiwan to exercise more psychological pressure, Su Tzu-Yun, another researcher from the National Defense and Security Research Institute, said the last exercises in Chinas.

While Beijing has linked the exercises to Mr. Lais's comments, Mr. SU and other experts said that Chinese leaders also seemed to send an implicit message to the Trump administration. Lai sought to maintain the support of the United States in Taiwan during the mandate of President Trumps, in particular by promising to increase his military spending to more than 3% of the economic production of the islands this year.

Advertising around exercise is probably in mind the United States that it wants to persuade the Trump administration that Lai is a troublemaker and dissuade the United States from maintaining high levels of Taiwan, said Amanda HsiaoAnalyst for the Eurasia group which monitors Chinese foreign policy and Chinese-Taiwan tensions.

The exercises occurred a few days after the United States Secretary for Defense, Pete Hegseth, visited Tokyo to discuss the strengthening of military ties with Japan. Hegseth said there that the Trump administration would focus on the fight against Chinese power, including his efforts to tighten Taiwan.

America has undertaken to undergo a robust, ready and credible deterrence in Indo-Pacific, including in the Strait of Taiwan, Mr. Hegseth said in a press conference With the Minister of Japan of Defense, General Nakatani. Mr. Hegseth has also published internal guidelines in the Pentagon who say that American forces must focus on dissuading it from China to try to grasp Taiwan by force, force Washington Post reported.

However, China may not have an appetite for the moment for extensive military exercises which could deepen the divisions between the Trump administration and the chief of China, Xi Jinping. Xi is already competing with Trump on additional American rates on Chinese products that were imposed last month, with perhaps more prices to come this week. Official Chinese statements over the last years have not mentioned the United States.

China is really interested not to show weakness, Wen-Ti SugA researcher in Taiwan and a non -resident scholarship holder of the Global China Hub of the Atlantic, said about Mr. Xis' approach to the Trump administration. But China will respond with just enough firmness to make sure that a deactivated ramp for it remains.