TAIPEI -- China has launched what Taiwan officials say is its largest maritime deployment in recent memory, ratcheting up intimidation against Taipei and neighboring countries weeks before the U.S. presidential transition.
Beijing had dispatched more than 90 naval and coast guard ships to the region "aimed at all the parties in the first island chain," according to a Taiwanese national security memo seen by Nikkei Asia, referring to Taiwan, Japan's Okinawa prefecture and the Philippines. The memo calls it China's largest fleet deployment in regional waters in nearly three decades and estimates it took 70 days to prepare.
