The Communist nation carried out live-fire military drills in the Taiwan Strait on Wednesday; the training was to show the growing strength of the Chinese Navy and to deliver a message to self-governed Taiwan.
According to State media, the drills, conducted in the Taiwan Strait, were held for the first time in two years.
The drills covered a two-square-mile area which included two islets off the city of Quanzhou in Fujian Province. The exercises took place about 125 miles west of the city of Hsinchu on Taiwan’s west coast.
Liu Jieyi, the director of China’s Taiwan Affairs Office, said this week that the exercises were planned with Taiwan in mind. “Our military exercises are carried out to protect the sovereignty of our motherland and territorial integrity,” he told reporters Monday on the sidelines of a cross-strait business conference in the central Chinese city of Zhengzhou.
Previously, the Chinese leader, Xi Jinping, was in attendance of large-scale exercises in the Hainan Island in the South China Sea. The leader stated that “The task of building a powerful navy has never been as urgent as it is today,” in a speech during the exercises.
