Contrary to what was originally announced, China did not end its military maneuvers around Taiwan on Sunday but continued them on Monday.

Regional Command East said its armed forces would "continue to conduct joint training under real wartime conditions."

Fighting submarines and sea attacks will be practiced.

Friederike Böge

Political correspondent for China, North Korea and Mongolia.

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Linguistically, too, China made it clear that it does not want to return to business as usual, but wants to create a new reality.

A State Department spokesman said these were "normal" military exercises "in our own waters."

This was reminiscent of comments made in June when China announced it did not consider the Taiwan Strait to be international waters.

Many China experts warned even before House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's visit to Taiwan that Beijing would use it to permanently create a new status quo in the Taiwan conflict.

China's punitive measures are expected to last for weeks, if not months.

With its maneuvers to date, Beijing has demonstrated that it would be able to interrupt supplies to Taiwan with military threats.

China initially did not block new areas for target practice on Monday.

Ship and air traffic around Taiwan began to return to normal.

But the situation remains fragile.

Beijing's statements about its next steps are vague.

The Ministry of Defense did not announce how long the new exercises should last.

The Foreign Ministry spokesman claimed the Chinese action was "transparent".

Beijing praises "observant" tourists

As China ramps up military pressure on Taiwan, the question is how the United States will respond.

During the four-day maneuvers, the American Navy left the aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan in an observer position in the region, but held back demonstratively.

In Taiwan, calls for a more decisive response are now growing louder.

The Taiwanese government is also coming under pressure to counter Chinese threats more vigorously.

In relations with America, Beijing continued to escalate on Monday.

Last week, China shut down several bilateral military communication channels.

Responding to criticism from Washington, a Chinese defense ministry spokesman said, "The United States first creates a crisis and then claims to want to manage it."

At home, China is using the tensions to once again stir up a feeling of external threat among the population.

State and party media last week circulated videos of three foreigners allegedly "secretly" filming Chinese military exercises on the southern Chinese island of Pingtan.

From there, fighter jets could be seen in the sky heading towards Taiwan.

The planes have been photographed countless times by Chinese tourists.

The military had even brought up tanks on the beach in Xiamen to put on a show for the tourists.

But the foreigners in Pingtan were said to be spies with "dark motives".

Attentive tourists "bravely" stood in their way and prevented them from taking any more pictures.

The Chinese military praised the tourists for their "national security awareness".

In some posts, passers-by were asked to destroy the cameras of the alleged spies.

In reality, it was a perfectly normal European television crew.

As recently as June, the Ministry for State Security announced that rewards equivalent to up to 14,500 euros would be paid for information from the population about violations of national security.

The reward serves to "mobilize the whole of society to work together to protect national security".

The mobilization is having an effect.

Many Chinese who work for Western institutions or are just friends with foreigners feel this.

A Chinese employee of an American media company reports that her grandmother asked her last week if she was a spy.