A total of 71 aircraft and nine military ships from China carried out incursions on Saturday in areas around Taiwan during the exercises carried out by the Chinese Army in areas near the island, the Taiwanese Ministry of Defense reported today.
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.
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 and the speaker of the United States House of Representatives, Kevin McCarthy.
A Chinese military spokesman defined the maneuvers as "a serious warning" against "the provocation of separatist forces" and one "action necessary to protect national sovereignty and territorial integrity" from China.
Taiwan’s Defense Ministry expressed its condemnation of the military maneuvers on Saturday, describing them as "an irrational act endangering 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.