China has simultaneously been holding military drills in the South and East China seas as well as the Yellow Sea and the Bohai Sea, naval authorities said Monday, amid escalating tensions with Taiwan and the United States.

The authorities have prohibited ships from navigating in the waters where the exercises have been held, with state-run China Central Television airing footage of the People's Liberation Army performing urban warfare drills.

The exercises, being conducted by a command based in Fujian Province facing Taiwan, are apparently aimed at landing on the island, which has been separately governed from the communist-mainland since they split in the wake of a civil war in 1949.