China’s military maneuvers last week were aimed at intimidation and propaganda rather than starting a war, Taiwan’s security chief said.

As Taiwan’s top security official Tsai Ming-yen told reporters in parliament on Wednesday, China’s military exercises last week were less interested in starting a war than in spreading propaganda and creating intimidation. According to Reuters, Tsai described the military exercises as “purpose to intimidate” and Beijing’s intention to demonstrate to both external and internal audiences that it has “absolute control over the situation in the Taiwan Strait.”

The Chinese government had said it had held the two-day war games as “punishment” for the inauguration speech of new President Lai Ching-te, in which he declared that the two sides of the Taiwan Strait were “not interdependent” – a statement that China interpreted as a declaration of Taiwan’s independence.

While China considers Taiwan, which is democratically governed, to be its own territory and has never ruled out the use of force to regain control of the island, Lai rejects China’s claims of sovereignty. He stresses that only the people of Taiwan can decide their future and has repeatedly offered talks to Beijing, but these have been rejected.

Zhu Fenglian, spokeswoman for China’s Taiwan Affairs Office, renewed her list of complaints in Beijing about Lai as a dangerous supporter of formal Taiwan independence and threatened further Chinese military activity, which she said was a “just action to defend national sovereignty and territorial integrity,” Zhu told Reuters.

In Taipei, however, the government emphasizes that Taiwan is already an independent country, namely the Republic of China. Regarding Taiwan’s future, China claims that all 1.4 billion Chinese, and not just the 23 million Taiwanese, should be able to decide. A model of autonomy à la Hong Kong has been proposed, but according to opinion polls, this has little public support on the island.

Finally, Tsai highlighted that Chinese forces were mobilized almost immediately after China announced the drills last Thursday morning. “The speed was extremely fast, showing rapid mobilization capability,” he said.