April 9, 2023, 12:32 PM
April 9, 2023, 12:32 PM
A total of 71 aircraft and nine military ships from China made incursions on Saturday in areas around Taiwan during the maneuvers carried out by the Chinese Army in areas near the island, the Taiwanese Ministry of Defense reported this Sunday (04.09.2023).
The military portfolio explained in its Twitter social network account that 45 of the Chinese airplanes crossed the median line of the Strait of Formosa, which in practice is an unofficial border tacitly respected by Taipei and Beijing in recent decades.
Models such as SU-30, J-10 and J-11 fighters took part in the air raid, which took place in the southwestern and northern parts of Taiwan’s self-defined Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ), which is undefined and unregulated. by any international treaty and is not equivalent to its airspace.
The movements were detected between 6:00 am on Saturday (22:00 Friday GMT) and 6:00 am on Sunday (22:00 Saturday GMT).
The island’s air forces monitored the situation with naval and combat air patrols and ground-based missile systems, the ministry said.
“A serious warning”
In the past two years, Chinese military aircraft have carried out numerous raids on the Taiwanese ADIZ, escalating at a time when tensions between the two territories have escalated.
China announced the exercises this Saturday, which will last until Monday, in response to the meeting this Wednesday in California between Tsai Ing-wen and the speaker of the United States House of Representatives, Kevin McCarthy.
A Chinese military spokesman called the moves “a serious warning” against “provocation by separatist forces” and a “necessary action to protect China’s national sovereignty and territorial integrity.”
Taiwan’s Defense Ministry on Saturday expressed its condemnation of the military exercises, describing them as “an irrational act that endangers regional security and stability.”
Beijing has considered Taiwan a rogue province since Kuomintang nationalists withdrew there in 1949 after losing the civil war to the communist army.
