The Taiwanese Ministry of Defense denounced on Monday the presence of 71 Chinese planes and five military ships in the vicinity of the island, with 47 of the planes arriving to cross the so-called median line of the Taiwan Strait.
Among the 47 aircraft of the People’s Liberation Army (Chinese Army) that crossed the median line were 12 J-11 fighter jets, 18 J-16 fighter jets and six SU-30 fighters, which crossed the median line between 06:00 local time on Sunday (22:00 GMT on Saturday) and 6:00 on Monday (22:00 GMT on Sunday).
The median line of the Strait of Formosa, which in practice is an unofficial border tacitly respected by Taipei and Beijing in recent decades, has been constantly crossed in recent months by Chinese forces during military exercises.
According to the military portfolio, the island’s air forces monitored the situation with combat air and naval patrols and with missile systems on the ground to scare away Chinese planes from the Taiwanese Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ), which is not defined. nor regulated by any international treaty and is not equivalent to its airspace.
These incursions occur after the United States Congress approved last Friday the so-called National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which authorizes spending of 858,000 million dollars in defense, energy and national security that includes aid military to Taiwan.
In the past two years, the number of raids by Chinese planes and ships has increased, actions that have been condemned by both Taiwan and the United States.
The visit to the territory last August by the speaker of the US House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi, deeply irritated the Chinese government, which responded with economic sanctions and the announcement of military exercises in the waters surrounding Taiwan. , decisions that brought tension in the Taiwan Strait to levels unheard of in decades.
China claims sovereignty over the island and considers Taiwan a rogue province since Kuomintang nationalists withdrew there in 1949 after losing the civil war against the communists.
Taiwan, with whom the US does not have official relations, is one of the biggest sources of conflict between China and the US, mainly because Washington is the island’s main arms supplier and would be its biggest military ally. in the event of a war with the Asian giant.