Il Messaggiere - Taiwan coastguard says Chinese ships 'withdrawing' after drills

China launched missiles and deployed dozens of fighter jets, navy ships and coastguard vessels around the island on Monday and Tuesday in live-fire drills aimed at simulating a blockade of the Taiwan's key ports and assaults on maritime targets.

Taipei, which slammed the two-day war games as "highly provocative and reckless", said the manoeuvre failed to impose a blockade on the island.

Communist China has never ruled democratic Taiwan, but Beijing claims the island of 23 million people is part of its territory and has threatened to use force to annex it.

"The warships and coastguard vessels are withdrawing, but a few are still lingering outside the 24-nautical-mile line," Hsieh Ching-chin, deputy director-general of Taiwan's coastguard, told AFP, indicating the "drills should be over".

Taiwan's coastguard has maintained a deployment of 11 ships at sea because China Coast Guard vessels "haven't completely left the area yet" and "we can't let our guard down," he said.

Beijing has not yet publicly declared the drills to be finished.

China's show of force follows a bumper round of arms sales to Taipei by the United States, Taiwan's main security backer, and comments from Japan's prime minister that the use of force against Taiwan could warrant a military response from Tokyo.

There has been a chorus of international criticism of China's drills.

Japan said Wednesday that China's military exercises "increase tensions" across the Taiwan Strait, and that it had expressed its "concerns" to Beijing.

Australia's foreign ministry also condemned on Wednesday China's "destabilising" military drills around Taiwan, saying it had raised concerns with Beijing counterparts.

Beijing's Taiwan Affairs Office, however, called the exercises a "stern warning to 'Taiwan independence' separatist forces and interfering external forces".

"They are a necessary and just measure to safeguard national sovereignty and territorial integrity," TAO spokeswoman Zhang Han told a news conference on Wednesday.

China said on Tuesday it had deployed destroyers, frigates, fighters and bombers "to conduct drills on subjects of identification and verification, warning and expulsion, simulated strikes, assault on maritime targets, as well as anti-air and anti-submarine operations".

A statement from the PLA's Eastern Theater Command said the exercises in the waters to the north and south of Taiwan "tested capabilities of sea-air coordination and integrated blockade and control".

The drills were held as US ambassador to China David Perdue met with his counterparts from Australia, India and Japan, which are part of the Quad group, seen as a counter to Beijing.

"The Quad is a force for good working to maintain a free and open Indopacific," Perdue said Tuesday in a post on X, alongside a photo of the four ambassadors in Beijing.

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P.Russo--IM