China restricts chunks of airspace for 40 days as fears mystery military drills are practice for Taiwan invasion

CHINA has restricted huge chunks of airspace for the next 40 days as fears grow that a Taiwan invasion is imminent.

Beijing has given no explanation for why it’s blocking aircraft from entering five zones off the country’s north-east coast.

It’s feared the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) will be drilling “air combat manoeuvres” needed to take over the self-governing island.

Usually, Xi Jinping‘s troops block airspace for just a few days at a time and announce they’ve done so to practice military exercises.

So blocking off the massive no-fly area for such a long time without announcing drills has alarmed experts.

Stanford University’s Ray Powell – who tracks Chinese maritime activity – called the 40-day duration “extraordinary”.

“That suggests not a discrete exercise but a sustained operational readiness posture and one that China apparently doesn’t feel the need to explain,” he told NDTV.

“If the zones are confirmed to be linked to exercises, the warnings would represent a meaningful shift in how Beijing uses airspace control as a tool of military signalling.”

The reservation period began March 27 and will run until May 6.

The zones extend from the Yellow Sea off South Korea to the East China Sea off Japan – an area larger than mainland Taiwan itself.

Christopher Sharman – director of the US Naval War College’s China Maritime Studies Institute – said some of China’s past military drills have aimed to control routes the American military might use in a potential Taiwan conflict.

“The reserved airspace could provide an opportunity to practice the kinds of air combat manoeuvres that would be required in such a scenario,” he said.

It comes as a top secret American security document has revealed which global superpower would win if China and the US went to war over Taiwan.

The highly classified Overmatch brief, produced by the Pentagon, reveals the horrifying conclusion – China would defeat the US military if a conflict was to play out over the breakaway democratic isle.

Taiwan’s President Lai Ching-te recently warned that China would become “more aggressive” and attack other countries in the Indo-Pacific, undermining “peace and stability” – if China took over Taiwan.

“If Taiwan were annexed by China, China’s expansionist ambitions would not stop there,” he said.

“The next countries under threat would be Japan, the Philippines, and others in the Indo-Pacific region, with repercussions eventually reaching the Americas and Europe.”