Taiwan reports incursions by Chinese military ships and aircraft in its vicinity

A total of 37 planes and eight Chinese military ships carried out raids on Monday in areas around Taiwan, the island's Defense Ministry said.

Thomas Osborne
Thomas Osborne
30 August 2022 Tuesday 02:30
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Taiwan reports incursions by Chinese military ships and aircraft in its vicinity

A total of 37 planes and eight Chinese military ships carried out raids on Monday in areas around Taiwan, the island's Defense Ministry said.

The military portfolio explained last night on the social network Twitter that twelve of the Chinese planes crossed the middle line of the Strait of Formosa, which in practice is an unofficial border tacitly respected by Taipei and Beijing in recent decades, but which has been crossed in recent weeks by Chinese forces during military exercises. J-16, SU-30 and J-11 fighters crossed the median line in its southwestern and northern parts.

The island's air forces monitored the situation with naval and combat air patrols and ground-based missile systems to ward off Chinese aircraft from the Taiwanese ADIZ, which is not defined or regulated by any international treaty and is not equivalent to its air space.

The incursions of military aircraft of the People's Liberation Army (PLA, Chinese Army) in the Taiwanese ADIZ increased considerably from the end of 2021 and have become even more frequent due to the trip of the speaker of the United States House of Representatives , Nancy Pelosi, to the island in early August, a visit that angered Beijing.

China responded to Pelosi's trip, which it called a "farce" and "deplorable betrayal," with trade sanctions on the island and military exercises around Taiwan that Taipei described as a "blockade."

Last Sunday, two US Navy warships sailed into the international waters of the Taiwan Strait, as a result of which Beijing accused the United States of "deliberately undermining regional peace and stability."

China insists on "reunifying" the People's Republic with the island, which has been governed autonomously since the Kuomintang (KMT) nationalists withdrew there in 1949 after losing the civil war against the communists and continued with the regime of the Republic of China, culminating in the transition to democracy in the 1990s.