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STORY: ::Taiwan Coast GuardTaiwan raised its alert level on Monday as it said that Chinese vessels were massing in the area.In what are likely to be military drills, a senior Taiwanese security official said Beijing currently has nearly 90 naval and coastguard vessels in waters near Taiwan, the southern Japanese islands and the East and South China Seas.China, which claims democratically governed Taiwan as its own territory, had been expected to launch a fresh round of military exercises.::Taiwan Presidential Office::December 4, 2024That's in response, security sources said, to Taiwan President Lai Ching-te's trip to the Pacific, which included stopovers in Hawaii and the U.S. territory of Guam.::PLA Eastern Theater Command::Released October 14, 2024However, one Taiwanese security source said the scale of China's deployment this time was much larger than the two previous military drills around Taiwan this year."For the first time they are targeting the entire island chain," the source said, referring to an area that runs from Japan through Taiwan, the Philippines and on to Borneo, enclosing China's coastal seas.Beijing's defense ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment.But, at a foreign ministry briefing, spokesperson Mao Ning dismissed Taiwan's concerns by asserting China's claim over the island. "The question of Taiwan is an internal affair of China, and China will firmly safeguard its national sovereignty and territorial integrity."Lai and his government reject Beijing's sovereignty claims, saying only Taiwan's people can decide their future.Speaking at a U.S. naval base in Japan on Monday, U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin called China "the only country in world that has the intent and increasingly the capability to change the rules-based international order."Though he added that he did not believe an attack by China was "either imminent or unavoidable".