Taiwan raised its alert level on Monday saying China has set up seven zones of reserved airspace and deployed naval fleets and coast guard boats in what a security source described as the first military drills across a broad swathe of the region’s waters.
A senior Taiwan security official told Reuters that China currently has nearly 90 navy and coast guard ships in waters near Taiwan, the southern Japanese islands and the East and South China Seas, of which around two-thirds were navy vessels.
Beijing’s defence ministry did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.
China, which claims democratically governed Taiwan as its own territory, had been expected to launch another round of exercises in response to Taiwan President Lai Ching-te’s trip to the Pacific, which included stopovers in Hawaii and the U.S. territory of Guam, security sources had told Reuters.
China has set up seven “temporary reserved areas” of airspace to the east of its eastern Fujian and Zhejiang provinces, Taiwan’s defence ministry said in a statement, adding those zones are valid from Monday to Wednesday.
Such zones are temporarily reserved and allocated for a particular user during a set period, though other flights can pass through with permission from…