Days after Taiwan President Lai Ching-te and Vice-President Hsiao Bi-khim were sworn in, Beijing has made its feelings about the pair widely known.
The duo are even more despised by the superpower than Taiwan’s outgoing leader Tsai Ing-wen, whose eight years in office was characterised by closer ties with the United States and growing tensions with China.
But the Taiwanese public defied Beijing by delivering Mr Lai the presidency, granting his Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) an unprecedented third term.
Many expected China would respond and within days of the inauguration, Taiwan had its answer.
On Wednesday, an editorial for Chinese Communist Party mouth-piece The Global Times, referred to Mr Lai as a ‘”thorough ‘peace disruptor’… with an extremely arrogant attitude”.
Then a day later, the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) launched two days of military drills in the air and sea around Taiwan, as well as some outlying islands, which are close to the Chinese coast.
Chinese state media reported dozens of jets were carrying live missiles.
By late Thursday evening, Taiwan’s Ministry of National Defence (MND) said it had spotted 49 Chinese military aircraft, 35 of which crossed the median line, which is the unofficial halfway point between Taiwan and China.
There were also 15 navy ships and 16 coast guard boats in the area.
The spokesperson for the Eastern Theater Command of the PLA said the exercises were a “strong punishment” for the activities of Taiwanese independence forces, and warned against external interference.
Beijing’s response has prompted analysts to warn it could be a sign of bigger things to come.
Why did this recent action happen?
Analysts say there are a couple of reasons behind the timing of Beijing’s military exercises and why it has made its condemnation of Mr Lai so well known.
“I think the purpose of carrying live weapons, but conducting simulated attacks is twofold,” says Ben Lewis, co-founder of PLATracker, a research organisation that tracks Chinese military activity.
“First, I think it is in line with PLA’s goal of practising how they plan to fight, which means carrying the weapons you’re going to use.
“Second, I think it’s a clear case of signalling to Taiwan. Beijing is saying, ‘This time we aren’t using these, next time we might.'”
Some of Beijing’s fury at the new president was sparked by Mr Lai’s inauguration speech on Monday, in which he said China needed to stop its military and political threats.
Beijing has previously described Mr Lai as a “dangerous separatist”. For some years now, Mr Lai has stepped back from his previous description of himself as a “pragmatic worker for Taiwan independence”, seemingly in an effort to appease Beijing.
While Mr Lai made his commitment to maintaining the status quo clear in his address, he also said he hopes China “will face the reality of the Republic of China’s [Taiwan’s] existence [and] respect the choices of the people of Taiwan”.
“So long as China refuses to renounce the use of force against Taiwan, all of us in Taiwan ought to understand, that … China’s ambition to annex Taiwan will not simply disappear,” Mr Lai said.
China responded by saying Mr Lai had sent “dangerous signals” that sought to undermine peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait.
“In the 24-hour global news cycle, Beijing feels it needs to visually demonstrate its displeasure against Taiwan’s new Lai Ching-te presidency immediately, lest any narrative that Beijing is setting a new precedent that it can ‘swallow’ [the] Taiwanese leader’s statements that Beijing usually claims to find unacceptable,” says Wen-Ti Sung from The Atlantic Council’s Global China Hub.
“But this is just the ‘signal’ — the real ‘punishment’ may be yet to come.”
China has been growing bolder towards Taiwan
Until 2022, the median line, which was devised with the help of the US during the Cold War but never formally recognised by China, was largely respected as a general boundary by the PLA.
Taiwan’s MND publishes daily updates on PLA activity in the waters and airspace around Taiwan, noting whether any ships or aircraft cross the median line or enter its Air Defense Identification Zone.
Analysts have noted a marked increase in the PLA’s activity in the area over the past three years.
While there has been a steady increase, two spikes in activity coincided with trips involving senior politicians from Taiwan and the US.
One was in August 2022, when drills were launched in response to the visit of then US speaker of the house Nancy Pelosi to Taiwan.
And the other was in April 2023, when Ms Pelosi’s successor, Kevin McCarthy, met with Tsai Ing-wen in the US.
Based off the activity on the first day of the exercises, Mr Lewis thinks Joint Sword-2024A will be smaller than the exercises performed in response to these two incidents.
“The exercise zone surrounds the entire island, but seems to focus more on the south,” he said.
“I think this is the start of a concerted effort to normalise a larger PLA presence east of Taiwan.
“I think there can be a little doubt that there will be more drills in the future, when and in response to what are nearly impossible to predict.”
Experts say this is supported by the name of the exercises, Joint Sword-2024A, with the use of the letter A possibly suggesting the drills are the first in a series.
“This feels like a prelude to more and bigger military drills to come,” Mr Sung said.
“Beijing is showing muscle in the immediate wake of Lai’s presidential inauguration to signal Beijing’s displeasure and shape international understanding of Beijing’s narrative about [Mr] Lai.”
Lai also faces problems at home
Before China’s drills kicked off, tension had already been building in Taipei.
The country’s two main opposition parties — the Nationalist Kuomintang (KMT) and the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) — have banded together to pressure the DPP, which is in minority in the legislature.
The KMT and TPP are pushing reforms that would seek to expand the powers of legislature, giving it the ability to question anyone, including the president, and introduce contempt of parliament charges, which experts have said could potentially be unconstitutional.
On May 17, physical altercations had erupted inside the chamber over the bill, and several parliamentarians were injured and ended up in hospital.
Then on Tuesday, one day after the inauguration, as many as 30,000 people, according to some accounts, gathered outside Taiwan’s parliament, the Legislative Yuan, in protest of the bill.
Police gathered inside the legislature in case it was stormed, bringing up memories of the 2014 Sunflower Movement when students occupied the LY for three weeks in protest of a China-friendly trade pact.
More demonstrators are gathering outside the LY today, and the drills around the island continue.
Anyone can see this has been a tumultuous start to a challenging four years in office.
A week that started off with symbolism and hope for the next few years, ended with uncertainty over what the future holds for the island.
President Lai is in a tricky position.
Along with a split parliament, Mr Lai is at the same time confronting a community divided over how to address growing inequities in Taiwanese society.
But his biggest problem will be China and working out what Taiwan’s future with its neighbour, together and apart, should look like.
If the developments of this week are anything to go by, Beijing isn’t going to make it easy.