Taiwan said Tuesday that China was conducting its largest maritime operations in nearly three decades, sending nearly 90 naval and coast guard vessels into waters stretching from the southern Japanese islands to the South China Sea.

Taiwanese defense officials said the scope of the deployment suggested that China was not only trying to show that it could choke the self-governed island, but also that it could block U.S. allies in the region like Japan and the Philippines from coming to Taiwan’s defense.

China has “extended their military strength outward,” Gen. Hsieh Jih-sheng, a senior official in Taiwan’s Defense Ministry, told reporters. “The numbers are indeed astonishing,” he said, referring to the surge of Chinese vessels in the waters. Sun Li-fang, a spokesperson for Taiwan’s Defense Ministry, said the maritime operations were the largest Taiwan has seen since 1996.

Taiwan on High Alert

The officials said Taiwan was on high alert in response to the Chinese ships, many of which were in waters off Taiwan’s southwest, east and northwest coasts.

China’s intentions were not immediately clear. There were no official announcements from Beijing that its forces were holding exercises. A Foreign Ministry spokesperson, asked Tuesday if China was conducting drills near Taiwan, deflected the question.

Speculation had been growing for days that China would launch war games in retaliation for visits made by Lai Ching-te, Taiwan’s president, to Hawaii and the U.S. territory of Guam last week while on his way to the Pacific islands.

China claims Taiwan, an island democracy, as its territory and opposes formal exchanges between it and countries like the United States. Lai’s visit to Guam, during which he had a phone call with House Speaker Mike Johnson, drew condemnation from Beijing.

Taiwan said it detected nearly 90 ships in the broader region, two-thirds of which were naval. Officials from the Defense Ministry said they had detected 47 Chinese warplanes and 12 Chinese naval ships close to the island. Taiwanese national security officials said it took China more than two months to amass all the ships and thousands of navy soldiers for the operation.

Hsieh suggested that China’s silence about the large deployment was aimed at catching the island off guard. Some Taiwanese analysts said China was taking a muted approach to avoid inflaming tensions with other countries.

“The purpose is to show its dissatisfaction” with Lai, “but to avoid an excessive international backlash,” said Su Tzu-yun, a security analyst at the Institute for National Defense and Security Research in Taipei, Taiwan.

China has already held two major military exercises since Lai was inaugurated in May, most recently in October. The war games have simulated encircling Taiwan in an effort to intimidate the island and warn its biggest backer, the United States, not to push Beijing too far. Such exercises add to the pressure China’s military already puts on Taiwan by deploying warplanes and naval ships almost daily to probe and exhaust the island’s defenses.

The surge in Chinese ships this week could also be a signal to the incoming Trump administration, which has yet to indicate how it will deal with Taiwan. President-elect Donald Trump has called for Taiwan to increase its military spending and has complained about the island’s dominance in making semiconductors. But some people he has picked to serve in his administration favor confronting China and offering more support to Taiwan.

While in Hawaii, Lai met with Hawaii Gov. Josh Green and delivered a speech about Taiwan’s security at the East-West Center, an education and research nonprofit. Lai also had a 20-minute phone call with Nancy Pelosi, the former U.S. House speaker. The two discussed China’s growing military threats and Taiwan’s semiconductor industry, said Karen Kuo, Lai’s spokesperson.

Lai went on to visit the Marshall Islands, Tuvalu and Palau, three Pacific Island nations that are among just a dozen states that maintain diplomatic relations with Taipei rather than Beijing.

Few issues are more volatile between the United States and China than the status of Taiwan. China’s top leader, Xi Jinping, has called “reunification” with the island “inevitable,” and said that Beijing would use force to that end if necessary. Washington, in turn, adheres to the terms of the Taiwan Relations Act of 1979, which obligates the United States to ensure Taiwan can defend itself.

Even though it has been happening for decades, China still objects when the United States sells arms to Taiwan. Last week, it imposed sanctions on more than a dozen U.S. defense firms and several defense industry executives in retaliation for Washington’s approval last month of a $387 million defense package.

“Buying weapons cannot buy security, and ‘protection fees’ cannot guarantee Taiwan independence,” Chen Binhua, a spokesperson for China’s Taiwan Affairs Office, said earlier this month.

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This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

By David Pierson and Amy Chang Chien
c. 2024 The New York Times Company