The Swiss newspaper Lotan (Le Temps) said that China tested for a week its ability to do not invade Taiwan, but besiege it, and proved that encircling this island is possible, including on its eastern side, to convince it that the Chinese army is able to cut off all supplies, including So aid from the United States in case of conflict.
After a Chinese military spokesman announced yesterday that the military exercises around Taiwan had "successfully concluded" and at the same time warned that "regular combat exercises" would continue, Lotan questioned what results can be drawn from this process on the military front, and about the balance of power between Beijing and Taipei now.
In his report to the newspaper, Frederick Koehler explained that Beijing, by mobilizing 100 combat aircraft, including stealth aircraft, a number of destroyers and launching dozens of missiles, showed its ingenuity in coordinated operations, and Chinese military analyst Song Zhongping said that the country's army "has the ability to impose siege".
combination of attacks
Military advisor Keech Liao of the Taiwanese think tank Doublethink said that the Chinese army has always been preparing to invade Taiwan, and this is another step in this direction, "and what we saw was the minimum that Beijing could do to satisfy its domestic audience," explaining that Beijing did not use the DF-missile. 21B "Aircraft Carrier Killer" that could give Washington an advantage, even though it used a large number of different weapons.
Perhaps most important was Beijing's covert act of cyber warfare, targeting sensitive infrastructure sites, ministries whose IT services were temporarily blocked, and internet infrastructure.
Russian war lessons
Although the island of Taiwan is mostly mountainous, which gives it a defensive advantage, the ability to coordinate between its army is a challenge and "this is the weakness of our defense today, as well as the weakness of surveillance and communication and our ability to identify and target enemy operations as quickly as possible," according to the Taiwan military advisor.
Currently - the newspaper says - the lessons of the Russian war in Ukraine are being reviewed, so that the consensus is to buy tanks that divided public opinion in Taiwan a few years ago, and for compulsory military service to return after its abandonment in 2018.