China Conducts Drills on Coast Facing Taiwan

China’s People’s Liberation Army is conducting war games involving 110,000 troops along a wide arc of its eastern coast opposite Taiwan, state media reported Thursday.

Combined land, air and sea forces of the Nanjing military district were holding drills along the length of the east coast provinces of Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Fujian, the People’s Daily reported.

The Communist Party newspaper quoted a military spokesman as saying such exercises were “rarely seen in recent years in terms of scope, number of participating troops and thoroughness.”

Maritime, amphibious and land drills involving submarines, frogmen, gunboats, paratroopers and attack helicopters were “necessary to prevail in future local wars under high-technology conditions,” the spokesman was quoted as saying.

Though China did not link the exercises to its dispute with Taiwan, Hong Kong media said they were clearly aimed at pressuring the island and reflected Beijing’s impatience with Taiwan’s new president, Chen Shui-bian.

Tension between Taiwan and China has intensified since Chen, whose party backs independence, won office in March. China has ignored a series of reconciliation gestures by Chen.

Beijing regards Taiwan as a breakaway province and has threatened to attack if Taipei declares independence or drags its feet on reunification indefinitely.

Tuesday, China marked the 73rd anniversary of the founding of the 2.5-million-member People’s Liberation Army with a vow to fight Taiwan separatism.

The northernmost venue for the military drills was Lianyungang in Jiangsu province, about 125 miles from where a U.S. warship was making a port call.

The Chancellorsville, a Japan-based guided missile cruiser, called at the port of Qingdao on Wednesday, making the first such visit in two years.

The four-day visit symbolized the restoration of military ties frozen after the North Atlantic Treaty Organization bombed Beijing’s embassy in Belgrade last year. NATO says the bombing was accidental.