'Most people are aware that these exercises are going on'
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00:00Taiwan has been on alert for these kinds of drills, these kinds of military exercises
00:04that were in some way expected after the speech that William Lai, the relatively recently
00:09elected president of Taiwan, gave on the National Day last Thursday.
00:14Now, the speech itself wasn't particularly provocative.
00:17If anything, we've heard him be much more provocative in the past.
00:21He really shred the line.
00:22He really adopted a pragmatic approach.
00:25And it was briefed out to journalists that that is exactly what he was trying to do.
00:29Not trying to anger, not trying to draw the ire of Beijing.
00:33But despite that, we have seen these military exercises going ahead, actually for an indefinite
00:38amount of time.
00:39We don't know when they're going to end yet.
00:41Beijing not giving an end date, although they generally do and have done in the past.
00:46Nine zones around the island of Taiwan and around Taiwan's offshore islands that are
00:51being engaged, that military exercises are being engaged in now by Beijing.
00:55And they really claiming in a video released by the PLA, by the Chinese army, that they
01:00accuse William Lai of being a separatist, accuse him of undermining peace and stability
01:05across the Taiwan Strait because of his views, his political views.
01:09And Yanna, how do people in Taiwan feel about all this?
01:12I mean, has life changed for them?
01:18That's really the interesting thing.
01:20When you walk around Taipei, I was walking on the streets of Taipei just a few hours
01:25ago, and life really does continue to go on as normal.
01:28Most people, of course, are aware that these exercises are happening.
01:32They will see them on their newsfeeds, but people go to work, children play in the parks.
01:37People exercise and go on runs.
01:39Life really continues as normal.
01:40And that's because this is really playing out on a higher level, on a state-to-state
01:44level, on a military-to-military level.
01:46So if people in Taiwan are noticing it, then why are China really doing this?
01:50Well, they're trying to send a signal.
01:52They're trying to send a signal to a few different audiences.
01:55First of all, to their domestic audience, they want to show that they have the resolve
01:58to unify Taiwan with the mainland and to satisfy the people in their country and in the party
02:03that want that.
02:04They also want to send a message not only to the people of Taiwan, but also to the politicians,
02:08to the leaders, the military generals in Taiwan, not to get too close to declaring independence.
02:13And they want to send a signal to the wider world, to people in Washington, to people
02:17in Europe, not to get involved in what they see as being an internal matter.