Taiwan says China has deployed largest fleet of ships in decades

Taiwan said Tuesday that China was conducting its largest maritime operations in nearly three decades, sending nearly 90 naval and coast guard vessels into waters stretching from the southern Japanese islands to the South China Sea.

Taiwanese defense officials said the scope of the deployment suggested that China was not only trying to show that it could choke the self-governed island, but also that it could block U.S. allies in the region like Japan and the Philippines from coming to Taiwan’s defense.

China has “extended their military strength outward,” Gen. Hsieh Jih-sheng, a senior official in Taiwan’s Defense Ministry, told reporters. “The numbers are indeed astonishing,” he said, referring to the surge of Chinese vessels in the waters. Sun Li-fang, a spokesperson for Taiwan’s Defense Ministry, said the maritime operations were the largest Taiwan has seen since 1996.

The officials said Taiwan was on high alert in response to the Chinese ships, many of which were in waters off Taiwan’s southwest, east and northwest coasts.

China’s intentions were not immediately clear. There were no official announcements from Beijing that its forces were holding exercises. A Foreign Ministry spokesperson, asked Tuesday if China was conducting drills near Taiwan, deflected the question.

Speculation had been growing for days that China would launch war games in retaliation for visits made by Lai Ching-te, Taiwan’s president, to Hawaii and the U.S. territory of Guam last week while on his way to the Pacific islands.

China claims Taiwan, an island democracy, as its territory and opposes formal exchanges between it and countries like the United States. Lai’s visit to Guam, during which he had a phone call with U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson, drew condemnation from Beijing.

Taiwan said it detected nearly 90 ships in the broader region, two-thirds of which were naval. Officials from the Defense Ministry said they had detected 47 Chinese warplanes and 12 Chinese naval ships close to the island. Taiwanese national security officials said it took China more than two months to amass all the ships and thousands of naval crewmen for the operation.

Hsieh suggested that China’s silence about the large deployment was aimed at catching the island off guard. Some Taiwanese analysts said China was taking a muted approach to avoid inflaming tensions with other countries.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

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