'Peaceful' China launches biggest military exercise in taunts to Taiwan with rockets fired into waters

Chinese naval and air force units also simulated strikes on maritime and aerial targets and carried out anti-submarine drills around the island, while state media released images touting Beijing's technological and military superiority and its ability to take Taiwan by force if necessary.

Named "Justice Mission 2025", the drills began 11 days after the US announced a record $11.1billion arms package to Taiwan, drawing the Chinese defence ministry's ire and warnings that the military would "take forceful measures" in response.

For the first time, China's military said the drills were aimed at deterring outside intervention.

"Any external forces that attempt to intervene in the Taiwan issue or interfere in China's internal affairs will surely smash their heads bloody against the iron walls of the Chinese People's Liberation Army," China's Taiwan Affairs Office said in a statement.

Beijing has also intensified its rhetoric over Taiwan in the weeks since Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi suggested a hypothetical attack on the island could trigger a military response from Tokyo.

Chinese leader Xi Jinping last week promoted the commander of the Eastern Theatre Command, which oversees Taiwan-facing operations, to full general, a move which analysts say serves to shore up the military's combat readiness after a leadership purge.

"China not only has vast numerical superiority, it now has qualitative superiority across the board in weaponry and probably in training as well," said Lyle Goldstein, Asia programme director at U.S.-based think tank Defense Priorities.

"This is an arms race Taiwan cannot possibly win."

United States President Donald Trump downplayed the drills on Monday, telling reporters: "I have a great relationship with President Xi [Jinping], and he hasn't told me anything about [the drills]. I certainly have seen it,...No, nothing worries me. They've been doing naval exercises for 20 years in that area."

The drills this week, the sixth major round of war games since 2022, were the largest by area and the closest yet to Taiwan.

Hsieh Jih-sheng, deputy chief of the general staff for intelligence at Taiwan's Defence Ministry, told reporters China had ramped up its drills around the island over the past three years to make people doubt the Government's ability to defend them.

A senior Taiwan security official told reporters that China appeared to be simulating striking land-based targets such as the US-made HIMARS rocket system, a mobile artillery system with a range of about 300 km that could hit coastal targets in southern China.

Taiwan's President Lai Ching-te said in a post on Facebook that frontline troops were primed to defend the island but that Taipei did not seek to escalate the situation.

China's state media rolled a stream of propaganda posters, including one titled "Hammers of Justice" that showed Lai being crushed by one hammer striking the island's south while another hits its north.

Chinese newspapers also highlighted the first deployment of the Type 075 amphibious assault ship.

Zhang Chi, an academic at China's National Defence University, said the vessel can simultaneously launch attack helicopters, landing craft, amphibious tanks and armoured vehicles.

Taiwan sits alongside key commercial shipping and aviation routes, with some $2.45trillion in trade moving through the Taiwan Strait each year and the airspace above the island a conduit between China, the world's second-largest economy, and the fast-growing markets of East and Southeast Asia.

Taiwan's Civil Aviation Authority said that although 11 of Taipei's 14 flight routes were affected by the drills, no international flights had been cancelled. Routes to the offshore islands of Kinmen and Matsu near China's coast were blocked, affecting around 6,000 passengers.

Taiwan's defence ministry said 71 Chinese military aircraft and 24 navy and coast guard vessels had been operating around the island on Tuesday. The ministry added that China fired 27 rockets in Taiwan's waters.

Chinese coast guard ships were tracking Taiwanese vessels during the drills, a Taiwan coast guard official told reporters.

A Pentagon report released last week said the US military believed China was preparing to be able to win a fight for Taiwan by 2027, the centenary of the founding of the PLA.

China's military said on Monday that simulating a blockade of Taiwan's deep-water Port of Keelung to the island's north and Kaohsiung to Taiwan's south, its largest port city, was central to the drills.

The Pentagon report said US military planners believed Beijing was also contemplating carrying out strikes from China to take Taiwan by "brute force" if needed.

Leaders of the US House of Representatives' select committee on China called Beijing's military drills around Taiwan "a deliberate escalation."

"These drills are intended to intimidate Taiwan and other democracies in the region and to undermine peace and stability across the Indo-Pacific," committee Chairman John Moolenaar, a Republican, and it's top Democrat, Raja Krishnamoorthi said in a joint statement.

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