This Tuesday (9) – Monday night in Brazil – the Taiwanese army began military training with live ammunition to simulate a defense tactic against possible Chinese attacks on the island.
The exercises were held in Pingtung County, in the south of the island, around 9 am (10 pm GMT). The actions lasted about 50 minutes, according to the AFP news agency.
The training gathered 40 howitzers and hundreds of soldiers. A similar procedure is expected to take place on Thursday (10), according to Taipei.
Despite heightened tensions with Beijing following a visit by US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, the island’s army said Tuesday’s training was not a response to China’s military exercises in recent days.
On Monday (8), by the way, Beijing announced new training in the seas and in the airspace around Taiwan. The Chinese exercise takes place under real war conditions and, according to a statement from the Army’s Eastern Military Command, focuses on anti-submarine and maritime attack operations.
Chinese rhetoric also passes for the naturalness of military exercises, even if the tensions between the two countries make such speech difficult to believe. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin, for example, said Beijing carries out normal actions in “its own waters” in an open, transparent and professional manner.
Earlier, US President Joe Biden expressed concern about the continuation of the Beijing exercises. “I’m worried they’re moving around so much,” he said. “But I don’t think they’ll do any more than they are.”
Last week, China led strikes with dozens of planes and fired missiles near Taiwan. At the time, they flew over the island and fell to the east of the rebel country. Similar military training had taken place only once, in 1996.
