Mainland China has test-fired 10 missiles in the east, an officially released video clip shows in the latest in a series of military exercises signaling intensified efforts to target Taiwan.

The latest video was released on Thursday amid the Chinese military’s seventh incursion into Taiwanese airspace in the past nine days, which in turn prompted Taiwan to conduct a pilot launch of its own missiles that night.

Over the course of one minute, the clip showed a number of armored vehicles from the PLA Army Rocket Force heading to a desert training ground, followed by simultaneous launches of up to 10 missiles. It did not state the exact date or venue of the military exercise, with the Chinese People’s Liberation Army claiming in its newspaper PLA Daily that the location was in the eastern battle zone.

Captions on the clip read: “Dozens of Dongfeng 11A missiles are launched at the same time. What a spectacular scene.”

Mainland media later tempered its coverage, running in news reports on Friday that “10 missiles are fired together.”

Tensions across the Taiwan Strait have remained heightened for many weeks in light of frequent Chinese military activities in the region.

In previous military propaganda, photos published on the official Weibo account of the Eastern Theater Command showed missiles purportedly fired on the night of Sept. 14, but again without stating the venue or type of missiles mobilised.

On Thursday, a Chinese military Y-8 anti-submarine plane entered the Taiwanese air defense identification zone in the southwest, making the seventh intrusion since Sept. 16, Taiwan’s Ministry of National Defense said.

Taiwan responded by scrambling jets, issuing radio warnings and mobilizing surveillance and air defense assets, the ministry reported on its website.

Shen Dingli, a professor of international relations at Fudan University in Shanghai, wrote in the nationalist Global Times that he would not rule out the possibility that China “will fire the first shot” over Taiwan, given national unity was one of the country’s six core interests.

In a separate analysis published in Duowei News, the photos displayed on the PLA’s website were said to be of the Dongfeng-11 short-range ballistic missile, which had a range of 300 kilometers and a payload of 800 kilograms.

The analysis piece went on to say that if a cross-strait war broke out, DF-11 would be among the many types of missiles to be deployed in the first round. It emphasized that the test-firing exercise carried out in eastern China on Thursday obviously carried the message that “the sword is pointing at Taiwan.”

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