Xi Jinping gave go-ahead for missiles to fall into Japan's EEZ amid Taiwan drills: Report

Chinese President Xi Jinping personally decided to allow ballistic missiles fired by the military during recent extensive drills near Taiwan to land in Japan's exclusive economic zone in an effort to prevent Tokyo from interfering in any cross-strait contingency, Kyodo news reported citing sources familiar with the situation.

To make the training in the six areas surrounding Taiwan more combat-oriented, Jinping, who is in charge of the Central Military Commission, the country's highest decision-making body, scrapped a plan to avoid conducting exercises last week in waters bordering Japan's Exclusive Economic Zone, according to the sources.

The massive exercises got underway on August 4 as part of China's response to Speaker of the US House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi's visit to the autonomous island earlier in the previous week. Further, Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida objected when five of the 11 Chinese ballistic missiles launched on that day landed inside Japan's Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ).

Xi Jinping adopted plan about Japan's EEZ in order to caution Kishida govt

According to media reports, the military sent Jinping two planes for the exercise locations, one of which avoided the waters to prevent jeopardising ties before the 50th anniversary of diplomatic relations in late September, and the other which covered Japan's EEZ south of a remote island in Okinawa Prefecture. One of the sources claimed that Jinping adopted the plan about Japan's EEZ to caution the Kishida administration against increasing Tokyo's involvement in the Taiwan Strait by strengthening its security alliance with the US.

A military blockade of areas close to the Nansei Islands, a chain that includes Okinawa and stretches southwest from Kyushu toward Taiwan, would not be possible in the event of a real operation to seize the island, according to the sources, so Jinping also preferred the drills to be held in waters that overlap Japan's EEZ. If Beijing launches an operation to seize the democratically run island with a population of 24 million, the Chinese military anticipates that US forces will send ships and fighter jets from their bases in Okinawa and other regions of Japan to support Taiwan.

The most recent training exercises near Taiwan were conducted under a scenario in which Chinese forces would launch ballistic missiles to bar US forces from the island and conduct landing operations after seizing control of the airspace and waters surrounding it. In their first phone conversations since the Japanese leader took office, Jinping and Kishida agreed in October 2021 to work towards "constructive and stable" relations in the run-up to the 50th anniversary of the normalisation of diplomatic relations.

Image: AP