China Challenges US With Unprecedented Wargame Against Key Ally

China launched the largest military drill in its history around Taiwan Monday in an unprecedented provocation directed at a critical and long-time American strategic ally.

The drills were designed to demonstrate Beijing’s power to cut off Taiwan via naval encirclement, and included live-fire exercises on targets at sea alongside simulated land attacks, Reuters reports. China has ramped up its posture toward Taiwan over the last year, conducting a similarly large exercise in June and another in the waning days of the Biden administration last December.

The U.S. has committed to the defense of Taiwan, should China launch an invasion. The island is one of the USA’s most important strategic allies in the Indo-Pacific, and and supplies a significant share of the world’s most advanced computer chips.

“Conducting live-fire exercises around the Taiwan Strait…would not only constitute military pressure on us, but could also pose more complex challenges and impacts for the international community and neighboring countries,” Deputy Chief of the General Staff for intelligence of Taiwan’s defense ministry Hsieh Jih-sheng told reporters Monday.