Beijing’s largest military drills around Taiwan were expected to end after navigation warnings for seven regions across the country ended early Monday. But the People’s Liberation Army’s Eastern Theater Command said it was “continuing joint training under real war conditions, focusing on the organization of joint anti-submarine warfare and naval raids.” The statement appeared to indicate that while the live-fire drills had ended, the Chinese military was continuing a pressure campaign that brought its fighter jets and warships closer than ever to Taiwan soil. Taiwan’s Ministry of Defense said the PLA exercises had an adverse effect on international air traffic. “Their intention is to hurt our morale and threaten regional security,” he said. Last week Tsai Ing-wen, Taiwan’s president, appealed to the international community for support. The US government has repeatedly condemned China’s aggression. The G7 group of industrialized countries called on Beijing to de-escalate the situation. But Washington, which has long acted as Taiwan’s unofficial protector, has not revealed whether it would use military force to deter China. Duan Dang, a regional security analyst in Vietnam, tweeted: “If the US doesn’t do something militarily to push China back to the Taiwan Strait and re-establish a credible red line, it will be very bad! Frankly, no one in the region is going to believe in US commitments anymore.” In addition to the military drills, Beijing has also stepped up a propaganda offensive aimed at eroding the island nation’s confidence in its security while pandering to nationalist sentiment on the mainland. After Chinese online map services began showing Taiwan in greater detail last week, state media and diplomats began publishing posts and articles highlighting signs of Chinese culture in Taiwanese cities, which they said strengthened the Beijing’s claim to sovereignty. A video posted on the Weibo account of state broadcaster CCTV showed signs in Taipei bearing the names of Chinese cities and provinces such as Tianjin, Shandong, Guiyang and Chongqing. It was accompanied by an emotional song with the lyrics: “A cloud from the homeland drifts to the edge of the sky and keeps calling me. As a light breeze rises beside me, a voice keeps calling, ‘Back, back!’ “Every road leads home!” a caption below the video being read. “Here, every street is filled with homesickness!” The propaganda campaign played on Taiwan’s complex national identity and history of Chinese immigration and successive waves of colonization.

After the Chinese Nationalist government took refuge on the island after its defeat in the civil war in 1949, it renamed most of the streets after mainland cities and traditional Chinese virtues. This was to support its claim as the legitimate government of China, as well as to destroy Taiwan after 50 years of Japanese rule and centuries of only a loose relationship with the mainland. However, according to polls conducted by Taiwan’s universities nearly 30 years ago, the majority of the country’s population do not consider themselves primarily Chinese and do not want to become part of China. Hua Chunying, a spokeswoman for China’s foreign ministry, posted screenshots of maps of the Taiwanese capital on Twitter, noting that they showed “38 Shandong dumpling restaurants and 67 Shanxi dumpling restaurants in Taipei.” “Palates do not deceive. Taiwan has always been part of China. The long lost child will finally come home,” he wrote. The claim that the Chinese restaurants proved that Taiwan was part of the mainland, which was spread by other diplomats, quickly backfired, however, when Twitter users responded by asking whether the presence of McDonald’s fast food outlets in Beijing proved that the China was historically part of the US. Video: Will China and the US go to war over Taiwan?