China Tests Missiles Off Coast Of Taiwan Tests Designed To Discourage Island Hopes For Independence

China began a series of ballistic missile tests just off the coast of Taiwan on Friday morning designed to discourage aspirations for independence on the island and to intimidate its 21 million people in the two weeks before its first presidential election.

Early on Friday morning, Taiwan’s Defense Ministry announced that China had launched two missiles into the seas near Taiwan. The missiles reportedly landed inside the previously announced target areas, offshore from major ports in the northern and southern ends of this island. Later, officials in Washington said three missiles had been launched.

In recent weeks China has been increasingly combative toward Taiwan, denouncing what it said were relentless efforts by Taiwan’s political leadership to move the island toward independence. China regards Taiwan as a renegade province and has said repeatedly that it would take military action to prevent the island from asserting independence.

“These exercises are not being carried out against the ordinary people of Taiwan,” Shen Guofang, the Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman, said at a news conference in Beijing on Thursday, but are intended to “suppress the acts of those pro-independence forces that are trying to create two Chinas, or one China and one Taiwan.”

The missile tests, clearly intended to shock the people of Taiwan, were the most aggressive Chinese actions toward Taiwan since the 1950s, when Beijing shelled some offshore islands under Taiwan’s control.

In Washington, the State Department called the tests “unnecessarily provocative” and “reckless.”

Friday morning’s tests are the third time China has fired test missiles into the waters around Taiwan, a tactic it adopted after a visit by President Lee Teng-hui of Taiwan to the United States last June. But the tests on Friday morning were far closer to Taiwan than previous ones, in target areas just 22 miles from the northern fishing port of Keelung and 32 miles from Kaohsiung, one of Asia’s busiest container port terminals.

Major shipping companies announced on Thursday that they would continue to use the port at Kaohsiung, but said they would have to skirt the target zone, adding time and cost to cargo shipments.

In Japan, the Transport Ministry announced that it was rerouting all commercial flights away from Taiwan. But Quantas and Ansett, the two Australian airlines, said they did not plan to divert flights from Taiwan, according to The China News, an English-language daily.

In the past week Taiwan has been swept by rumors of war, witnessed runs on the American dollar, the hoarding of some food supplies and a blizzard of pronouncements from the three candidates running for president.

“Everyone is worried,” said Hsu Lu, the general manager of the Voice of Taiwan, an independent radio station here. “People are talking about this on the streets, on the radio of course, everywhere. There’s lots of worries.”