ANALYSIS/Live-fire drills show China's displeasure over U.S., Canada transit: Experts

Taipei, Oct. 22 (CNA) People's Liberation Army (PLA) live-fire drills on Tuesday off Niushan Island off China's southeastern shore aimed to vent Beijing's displeasure over the passage of U.S. and Canadian warships through the Taiwan Strait two days earlier, experts said.

On Monday night, China's Pingtan Maritime Safety Administration posted a sailing advisory, which zoned out a no-sailing area off Niushan Island in the Pingtan area in light of live-fire drills scheduled for 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. Tuesday.

Su Tzu-yun (蘇紫雲), a research fellow at the defense ministry's Institute of National Defense and Security Research (INDSR), said the drills represented a "political signal" to signal Beijing's anger at the transit of Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer USS Higgins (DDG 76) and the Royal Canadian Navy Halifax-class frigate HMCS Vancouver (FFH 331) through the Taiwan Strait on Sunday.

China's move came despite the two ships sailing through a corridor that the U.S. 7th Fleet contended was "beyond the territorial sea of any coastal state," in a statement issued following the transit.

China considers the Taiwan Strait its internal waters and has routinely protested transits by foreign military vessels.

Similar incidents can be traced back to April 2023 when the PLA staged live-fire exercises in Pingtan just days after a meeting between then-President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) and then-U.S. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in California, Su noted.

In July 2022, the PLA also engaged in live-fire drills in the area just days after Beijing issued stern warnings about an imminent visit by then-U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to Taipei, Su noted.

Shu Hsiao-huang (舒孝煌), an associate research fellow at INDSR, agreed that the drills were held as a "warning" following the transit of the U.S. and Canadian warships.

However, while the PLA has become accustomed to using Pingtan as a setting to respond to developments in the region involving other countries, Tuesday's drills were relatively small judging by the coordinates given by the maritime safety administration, Shu said.

Just as the Joint Sword-2024B military drills on Oct. 14, which came just days after President Lai Ching-te's (賴清德) National Day speech and lasted 13 hours, was relatively brief, China likely did not want to be seen as "overreacting" and risk sparking an international backlash by staging large-scale drills, Shu explained.

Su, meanwhile, pointed to the short duration of Tuesday's drills, which suggested that Beijing likely wanted to avoid being reprimanded by the international community.

China's restraint was likely a response to the backlash received by Joint Sword-2024B exercises around Taiwan, Su said.

In the aftermath of Joint Sword-2024B, the European Union and the United Kingdom, as well as the defense ministers of the Group of Seven (G7) countries, issued statements expressing concern over the drills, reaffirming that peace in the Taiwan Strait is indispensable to international security and prosperity.

Meanwhile, Niushan Island, the closest point between the island of Taiwan and China, is just 119 kilometers from the Nanliao Fishing Port in Hsinchu City, Shu noted.

The PLA likely wanted to exploit the proximity between the island and Taiwan as a tool of psychological warfare to intimidate the Taiwanese people, Shu explained.

In a statement released Tuesday, Taiwan's defense ministry said while the drills were part of the PLA's annual exercises, it was still possible that they were timed to intimidate given the recent movements in the Taiwan Strait.

The ministry said it closely monitored the drills using its joint intelligence, reconnaissance and surveillance systems and took appropriate responsive measures.