Taiwan's Defense Ministry says a large Chinese military force has been detected near island

TAIPEI, Taiwan — China's secretive military appears to be up to something around Taiwan, but it's unclear whether it's a formal military drill.

Taiwan's Defense Ministry said Tuesday that it has detected a dozen Chinese naval ships and 47 military planes in the past 24 hours but no live-fire activity as in previous military exercises. The deployment covers a wider area this time, with additional ships going beyond Taiwan into other parts of the Pacific, defense officials said at a news conference.

Lt. Gen. Hsieh Jih-sheng said China’s navy is creating two walls — one at Taiwan's perimeter and another outside the first island chain, which extends south from Japan and through Taiwan to the Philippines. “The message they are sending is very simple: The Taiwan Strait is ours,” he said, referring to the waters between Taiwan and China.

The military has been bracing for possible drills by China in response to a recent overseas trip by Taiwanese President Lai Ching-te that included Hawaii and Guam, an American territory.

China claims Taiwan as part of its territory and opposes the self-governing island having official interactions with other countries, and in particular, the United States. Lai spoke with U.S. congressional leaders by phone while in Guam last week. While the U.S., like most of the world, doesn’t formally recognize Taiwan as a country, it is the largest supplier of arms to the island of 23 million people for its defense.

Without any announcement from China on military drills, Taiwan officials are calling the ongoing activity a training exercise. Hsieh noted that training can become drills, and drills can become war.

“It’s in the status of regular training,” he said. “But under the status of normalized training, it’s able to mobilize military forces on such a large scale and carry out exercises in such a large area.”

China, which views Lai as a separatist, held major military exercises around Taiwan following his inauguration in May and his National Day speech in October. It also held a major drill after Nancy Pelosi, then the speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, visited Taiwan in 2022.

Taiwan's military set up an emergency response center on Monday in response to the increased Chinese naval activity and the announcement of flight restrictions in seven zones off China's east coast. The restrictions are in place until Wednesday.

“We have noticed that there are no live-fire drill activities in the seven exercise areas as planned in the past," said Hsieh, who heads the office of the deputy chief of general staff for intelligence.