'Military action will continue until complete reunification': China warns Taiwan of war as military drills conclude

Warning Taiwan of a potential war, China on Friday said its military activities around the island will continue until the complete unification with the mainland.

China has just completed two-day-long military exercises around Taiwan which simulated the seizure of the island and attacks on key targets. The exercises came within days of Lai Ching-te taking over as the President of Taiwan.

China considers the self-ruled island of Taiwan to be a breakaway province and is committed to its reunification with the mainland. It has not ruled out the use of force for such reunification.

Following Lai’s inauguration on Monday, China launched the military drills as a “punishment” for Taiwan. In particularly sharp rhetoric, Chinese military vowed to make the blood of “independence forces” on the island flow as it kicked off the drills. China has associated Lai with the independence-asserting class of Taiwan’s polity and had previously openly worked to undermine his election.

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‘Countermeasures will continue until complete reunification’

China on Friday warned that the Chinese military actions —which it called countermeasures— will continue until “complete unification” of Taiwan with the mainland was achieved, according to AFP.

Chinese Defence Ministery Spokesperson Wu Qian said on Friday that Lai “has seriously challenged the one-China principle… pushing our compatriots in Taiwan into a perilous situation of war and danger”, according to the agency.

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

The Chinese drills, formally dubbed ‘Joint Sword-2024A’, were intended to serve as a “strong punishment for the separatist acts of ‘Taiwan independence’ forces”.

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This week’s drills are the latest in the series of major military provocations that China has undertaken in recent years. Last year, China had conducted similar large exercises when Lai, then the Vice President of Taiwan under Tsai Ing-wen’s administration, visited the United States. Before that, China had held major exercises in 2022 when Nancy Pelosi, who was the Speaker of the US House of Representatives at the time, had visited Taiwan.

Military drills encircled Taiwan

As 111 Chinese aircraft and dozens of naval ships practiced how to take over Taiwan and take down key targets on the island, Chinese state media said Beijing was closer than ever to Taiwan.

Analysts have also said that while this week’s drills were not as big as some of the previous ones in recent years, they were widespread in its geographical coverage. Wen-Ti Sung, a Non-Resident Fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Global China Hub told AFP that the geographic scope of the exercises had increased this week with a new focus on isolating Taiwan’s outlying islands.

This week’s exercises were focussed on encircling Taiwan and took place in the Taiwan Strait to the island’s north, south, and east.

Prof. Meng Xiangqing of Beijing-based National Defense University told Xinhua news agency that Chinese naval vessels “were getting closer to the island than ever before”.

Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Wang Wenbin separately said that those seeking independence in Taiwan will left with their “heads broken and blood flowing” after colliding against China’s efforts for the unification.

The drills were to test the “capability of joint seizure of power, joint strikes and control of key territories”, said Li Xi, a spokesman for the Chinese military on Friday, as per AFP.