A warning for shipping has been issued in the southern part of the Taiwan Straits.

The PLA is set to conduct live-fire drills off the southeastern city of Quanzhou starting today.

The drills coincide with military exercises taking place in Taiwan.

Mainland military observer Song Zhongping suggests people shouldn't read too much into the drills.

"It's just part of PLA's annual routine exercises. The areas at both ends of the straits are traditional training fields of the PLA's Nanjing Military Region and its East Sea Fleet. The scale of the exercise won't be large since the area demarcated is small."

The air-defense exercise is set to wrap up on Sunday.