According to Taiwan, China carried out its second largest incursion of the year into the island’s air defense zone yesterday, Monday (May 30), with the entry of 30 planes into the area, including 20 fighters.
Taiwan’s defense minister announced Monday night that he had taken off his own planes and deployed air defense missile systems to monitor Chinese activity.
According to Taipei, these incursions are the most important since January 23, when 39 planes had entered the air defense identification zone (“Adiz”, according to its acronym in English) of the island.
Beijing has begun in recent years campaigns of incursions into the defense zone of Taiwan which lives under the constant threat of an invasion from China. Last year, Taiwan recorded a record 969 Chinese military aerial incursions, according to the AFP database, more than double the 380 incursions in 2020.
On October 4, 2021 alone, 56 aircraft entered Taiwan’s Adiz, and 196 for the whole of October, which opens with the Chinese National Day. Taiwan has reported 465 incursions since the beginning of the year, an increase of almost 50% compared to the same period last year.