As Chinese military aircraft and vessels continue their daily operations around Taiwan, China issued a no-sail zone warning in waters near the self-ruled island on Tuesday, the latest show of force by Beijing amid tensions in the Taiwan Strait.
Maritime Safety Administration of China’s eastern Zhejiang province issued a navigational warning for a “military exercises” in the East China Sea from Wednesday to Friday.
Newsweek‘s map shows the boundaries of the declared danger zone in the waters east of Zhejiang and south of Shanghai, however large parts of the area fall within Taiwan’s air defense identification zone, or ADIZ, and roughly 11 miles from the Taiwan Strait’s median line.
China’s leaders claim the island as part of Chinese territory despite Taipei’s repeated rejections. Beijing has employed a mixture of military, economic, and psychological pressure against the island in service of its goal of eventual unification.
An ADIZ is self-declared airspace over land or water, in which the ready identification, location and control of aircraft is required in the interest of national security. But the zones—also used by neighboring China, South Korea, Japan and the Philippines—does not constitute territorial airspace and is not governed under international law.
China’s military deployed 22 aircraft and six vessels around Taiwan in the 24 hours to 6 a.m. on Wednesday, according to the Defense Ministry in Taipei.
Eastern Theater Command/Chinese People’s Liberation Army
On X (formerly Twitter), one observer of the Chinese military noted that the no-go zone, while large, was declared for a short duration.
“A wild guess would be that it is probably going to be the first catapult take-off test” of China’s third aircraft carrier Fujian, according to user @foolsball, who added that the area resembled a “big finger pointing” to the Taiwan Strait.
On Monday, a separate navigational warning issued by Shanghai’s maritime safety authority suggested the Fujian, China’s third and most advanced aircraft carrier, was due to conduct another sea trial in the East China Sea two days later, near the entrance of the Yangtze River.
The Fujian conducted its first sea trial on May 1. The flat-top warship is China’s first carrier capable of catapult-assisted take-off, whereas its two other carriers, both of Soviet design, launch aircraft with ski-jump ramps.
Satellite images showed the Fujian had returned to an outfitting dock on Tuesday. @foolsball speculated that it could be unloading aircraft mock-ups before sea trials.
Newsweek could not independently verify the authenticity of the image.
China’s Defense Ministry did not immediately return a request for comment.
PLA Navy
Lu Li-Shih, a former instructor at Taiwan’s Naval Academy, said in a Facebook post that the upcoming sea trial would help the Fujian improve shortcomings identified in its previous test.
He also believed that the carrier would conduct so-called “touch-and-go” landing with aircraft for this round of trials, while actual landing on the flight deck would wait until the next test.
Taiwan’s armed forces will conduct live-fire exercises from July 22-26 as part of the 40th edition of its annual Han Kuang war games. Lessons learned from the Russia-Ukraine war and the Israel-Hamas war will be incorporated in live-fire drills, according to Taiwanese Maj. Gen. Tung Chi-Hsing.
In response, Beijing slammed the Han Kuang exercise as a “show,” in which independence supporters in Taiwan are doomed to defeat. The “ending cannot be changed,” the Chinese Defense Ministry said in its monthly press conference in late June.
Uncommon Knowledge
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Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.