China began live-fire military drills in the South China Sea on Monday morning amid rising tensions in the region.
According to a statement released late Sunday by China’s Maritime Safety Administration, the exercises are scheduled to run from May 27 to May 30, with maritime traffic restricted in the affected areas during the drills.
Simultaneously, China is also conducting military exercises in the Yellow Sea, specifically in Bohai Bay, from May 27 through May 31.
These latest drills follow a series of exercises conducted in the South China Sea from May 20 to May 22, roughly 90 miles (170 km) southwest of Taiwan. China has significantly increased the frequency and scale of such military activities in recent years, often in response to geopolitical developments in the region.
Late Sunday, the U.S. Marine Corps announced it would be testing its NMESIS anti-ship missile system for the first time during joint exercises with the Philippines scheduled for next week. The deployment of the NMESIS system has drawn sharp criticism from Beijing.
The drills in the Yellow Sea also come as China asserts greater control over the area, which borders the Korean Peninsula. Last week, Beijing declared three “no-sail” zones within the Provisional Measures Zone (PMZ), a disputed area where the exclusive economic zones (EEZs) of China and South Korea overlap.
In the Taiwan Strait, both Taiwanese and U.S. officials have indicated that China has notably improved its capability to strike Taiwan and to shift from peacetime to wartime operations at short notice. Officials have pointed to China’s near-continuous training for amphibious assault scenarios on Taiwan, which both Beijing and Washington legally regard as a province of China.
In recent years, China has conducted multiple military drills simulating the blockade of Taiwan, increased the number of aerial sorties through Taiwan’s self-declared air defense identification zone (ADIZ), and sent more naval vessels across Taiwan’s declared maritime boundaries.