TAIPEI: Taiwan’s army held another live-fire drill on Thursday after China ended its largest-ever military exercises around the East Asian island, as it repeated threats to bring the self-ruled democracy under its control.

Beijing staged air and sea drills around the island for days — raising tensions to their highest level in years — in a furious response to United States House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan last week, making her the highestranking elected American official to travel to the island in decades.

Taiwan has accused China of using Pelosi’s visit as an excuse to kick-start drills that would allow it to rehearse for an invasion.

Lou Woei-jye, spokesman for Taiwan’s Eighth Army Corps, told Agence France-Presse (AFP) that its forces fired howitzers and target flares as part of the defensive drill on Thursday morning.

The exercise in the island’s southernmost county of Pingtung began at 8:30 a.m. and lasted about an hour, he said.

Artillery tucked in from the coast was lined up side by side, with armed soldiers in units firing the howitzers out to sea one after the other, a livestream showed.

Taiwan held a similar drill on Tuesday in Pingtung. Both included the deployments of hundreds of troops.

The military has played down their significance, saying they were already scheduled and were not in response to China’s war games.

“We have two goals for the drills. The first is to certify the proper condition of the artillery and their maintenance condition and the second is to confirm the results of last year,” Lou said, referring to the annual drills.

The latest exercise came after China’s military indicated its own drills had come to an end on Wednesday, saying its forces “successfully completed various tasks” in the Taiwan Strait while vowing to continue patrolling its waters.

But in the same announcement, the armed forces — formally called the People’s Liberation Army — added that it would “continue to carry out military training and prepare for war.”

In a separate white paper published on Wednesday, China’s Taiwan Affairs Office said Beijing would “not renounce the use of force” against its neighbor and reserved “the option of taking all necessary measures.”

“We are ready to create vast space for peaceful reunification, but we will leave no room for separatist activities in any form,” it added.

China last issued a white paper on Taiwan in 2000.

Taiwan’s foreign ministry on Thursday joined its top policymaking body on China in rejecting the “one country, two systems” model that Beijing proposed for the island.

“China’s whole statement absolutely goes against the crossstrait status quo and its reality,” ministry spokesman Joanne Ou told a press conference.

“China is using US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit as an excuse to destroy the status quo and taking the opportunity to make trouble, attempting to create a new normal to intimidate the Taiwanese people,” she said.

“One country, two systems” refers to the model under which Hong Kong and Macau were promised a degree of autonomy under Chinese rule.

Taiwan routinely stages military drills simulating defense against a Chinese invasion, and last month practiced repelling attacks from the sea in a “joint interception operation” as part of its largest annual exercises.

In response to the Chinese military revealing it was ending its drills, Taiwan’s army said it would “adjust how we deploy our forces…without letting our guard down.”