China is staging joint war games featuring mock beach landing, helicopter assaults and tank battles along its east coast facing Taiwan, just days before the inauguration of the self-governing island's new independence-leaning president, the Associated Press reports.

The Defense Ministry said Wednesday, May 18 the air, land and sea drills were aimed at "testing and upgrading the ability to respond to security threats and complete military missions."

The drills were "not aimed at any specific target and relevant persons shouldn't read too much into it," the ministry said. The statement in question-and-answer format did not mention Taiwan.

China maintains a standing threat to use force to achieve its goal of absorbing Taiwan and the timing of the drills was noticed widely both on Taiwan and in China's entirely-state controlled media, AP says.

Without detailing the consequences, Beijing has warned that delicate relations between the sides would be destabilized unless Taiwanese President-elect Tsai Ing-wen explicitly endorses Beijing's view that Taiwan and the mainland are both part of a single Chinese nation. The outgoing Nationalist Party government of Ma Ying-jeou endorsed the so-called "'92 Consensus" and signed a series of agreements on trade and other non-political topics during its eight years in power.

China last staged military drills and missile launches in 1995-96 in a bid to intimidate voters ahead of Taiwan's first direct presidential elections. The effort was seen as an abject failure that further alienated Taiwanese from Beijing.