China launches military drills around Taiwan as ‘punishment’

China launched two days of military drills surrounding Taiwan on Thursday in what it called a “strong punishment” to its opponents on the self-governing island, after Taiwan’s new president pledged to defend its sovereignty.

The drills were the first substantive response by China to the swearing-in of President Lai Ching-te, whom Beijing dislikes, in Taipei on Monday. Lai’s political party asserts Taiwan’s separate status from China, and in a high-profile inaugural speech, he vowed to keep Taiwan’s democracy safe from Chinese pressure.

China, which claims Taiwan as its territory, had mainly responded to Lai’s speech with sharply worded criticism. But it escalated its response Thursday by announcing that it was conducting sea and air exercises that would encircle Taiwan and draw close to the Taiwanese islands of Kinmen, Matsu, Wuqiu and Dongyin in the Taiwan Strait.

From the start of the exercises until the afternoon, 15 Chinese navy vessels, 16 Chinese coast guard vessels and 42 Chinese military aircraft were detected around Taiwan’s main island and smaller outlying islands, according to Taiwan’s Defense Ministry. Officials at a briefing in Taipei said that so far none of the Chinese aircraft and vessels had entered Taiwan’s territorial waters.

Li Xi, a spokesperson of the Eastern Theater Command of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army, said the latest exercises served as “strong punishment” for “Taiwan independence forces,” according to Chinese state media, and “a stern warning against the interference and provocation by external forces,” a reference to the United States.

Even as Lai pledged to protect Taiwan in his speech, he had sought to strike a conciliatory note in other ways, signaling that he remained open to holding talks with Beijing — which China had frozen in 2016 — and to resuming cross-strait tourism.

But China took offense to Lai’s assertion that the sides were equal — he had said that they “are not subordinate to each other.”