China’s live-fire exercises around Taiwan this week are simulating the steps it might take to seal off the island with a blockade, previewing the kind of coercive tactics Chinese leaders may employ in a future conflict.
The four-day exercises, to protest the visit to Taipei earlier this week by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, started at noon on Thursday in six zones that effectively encircle Taiwan. Several of the zones face the island’s biggest commercial ports and overlap with what Taipei claims as its territorial waters, coming within 12 miles of its coastline in what some military analysts have compared with a temporary blockade.