“I will be on the front line with our Army brothers and sisters to defend national security together,” said Lai, who took office on Monday, during an event held at a military base.
“In the face of external challenges and threats, we will continue to defend the values of freedom and democracy and preserve peace and stability in the region,” she added.
Beijing has argued that the military exercises launched around Taiwan constitute a “serious warning” to the island’s “separatists”, warning them that they will end in “blood”.
“All separatist forces in favor of Taiwan’s independence will end in blood, with their heads broken in the face of the historic event of the complete reunification of China,” said Wang Wenbin, spokesman for Chinese diplomacy.
China has surrounded Taiwan with military ships and planes as part of the exercises, which take place three days after Lai’s inauguration speech, in which he argued that Beijing must “face the reality of the existence of the Republic of China”, the name Taiwan official.
The territory of 23 million inhabitants operates as a sovereign political entity, with its own diplomacy and army, despite officially not being independent. Beijing considers the island its province, which must be reunited, by force, if necessary.
Mainland China said Lai’s speech promoted “separatist fallacies” and “incited confrontation and hostility” between the two sides of the Taiwan Strait.
The maneuvers began at 7:45 am today (00:45, in Lisbon) and should last until Friday, said Li Xi, spokesman for the Chinese Army’s eastern theater of operations, in a statement.
The operations are taking place “in the Taiwan Strait, to the north, south and east of the island of Taiwan, as well as in the areas around the islands of Kinmen, Matsu, Wuqiu and Dongyin”, reads the same note.
These last islands are located in the immediate vicinity of the Chinese eastern coast.
Speaking to Chinese state television CCTV, Zhang Chi, a professor at the National Defense University in Beijing, said the maneuvers aim to “impose an economic blockade on the island”, strangling the port of Kaohsiung, in southern Taiwan, which is of strategic importance. .
Such a blockade would allow it to cut “energy imports that are vital to Taiwan” and “block the support that some US allies are giving to Taiwan’s ‘independence’ forces,” Zhang said.
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