South China Morning Post 
- Exercises come after mainland China’s Eastern Theatre Command expanded facilities and troop deployments over the last few years
- Manoeuvres a political warning over growing ties between Washington and Taipei, observer says
A series of PLA drills at the northern and southern ends of the Taiwan Strait signal that Beijing is stepping up preparations to take control of the self-ruled island, according to military analysts.
Other signs included expansion of coastal military bases and the deployment of amphibious troop units in the area, they said.
The People’s Liberation Army’s Eastern Theatre Command, which oversees defences in the East China Sea and Taiwan Strait, said on Thursday that it conducted the drills north and south of Taiwan “in recent days”.
The command did not specify when and where the military exercises were staged. But the PLA had announced that there would be a two-day live-fire drill from Sunday in Zhoushan, Zhejiang province, about 550km (340 miles) north of Taiwan. A three-day drill was held in the area earlier this week.
At the same time, the Eastern Theatre Command has been expanding its facilities to house newly established amphibious combined arms brigades, according to satellite images in this month’s Kanwa Defence Review.
“Since 2017, the PLA Navy has formed at least two new marine brigades under this command. The PLA Army also deployed at least six amphibious brigades [to the command] too, taking their landing forces to more than 40,000 now.”
Foreign ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian said on Friday that the drills near Taiwan were a response to the “serious and negative signal” sent by a major power to Taiwanese independence forces
.The PLA conducted similar drills north and south of the strait in 1995 when late Taiwanese president Lee Teng-hui promoted the “two-state theory” to describe the relationship between Taiwan and the mainland. Exercises were mounted again in 1999 after Lee suggested that cross-strait ties could be a “special state-to-state relationship”.
Beijing-based military expert Zhou Chenming said the recent drills were a “political warning” over the growing ties between Taipei and Washington, including a four-day visit by US Secretary of Health Alex Azar to the island this week.
Taiwan military drill simulates coastal attack amid rising tensions with mainland China
It was also in response to Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen’s video address to the Hudson Institute, a Washington-based think tank, on Wednesday in which she highlighted the need for the self-ruled island to ramp up its defences to safeguard its democracy from Beijing’s “coercive actions”.
Song Zhongping, a Hong Kong-based military commentator, said more large-scale military drills targeting Taiwan would be staged before the US presidential election in November.
“[The mainland] believes the US and Taiwan independence forces have joined together to seek independence for Taiwan and to challenge the ‘one-China’ policy,” Song said.
“The PLA has started testing and simulating combat in large-scale military exercises, regarding those drills as rehearsals for some possible military operation of ‘Taiwan reunification’.”
Former Taiwanese defence minister Andrew Yang Nien-dzu said: “Chinese President Xi Jinping requires all the PLA troops to be ready to fight and win a local war, which means taking Taiwan back is the priority option.”