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Taiwan’s military detected a total of 22 Chinese aircraft flying near the island in a span of less than three hours on Saturday. The army reported this in a press release.
Twelve aircraft crossed the imaginary median line that divides the 180-kilometer-wide Taiwan Strait between the Chinese mainland and the island. They thus entered the Taiwanese air defense identification zone for the north and center of the country. The Taiwanese military clarified that army aircraft and drones joined Chinese Navy ships as part of a joint combat patrol.
The Chinese presence in the airspace around Taiwan comes less than a month after the swearing-in of new Taiwanese President Lai Ching-te.
Taiwan has been self-governing and de facto independent since the end of the Chinese civil war in 1949, but Beijing still considers the island a renegade province. In the years after World War II, Mao Zedong’s Chinese communists had driven Chiang Kai-shek’s nationalists from the mainland to Taiwan.
China is increasingly asserting itself in the waters and air around Taiwan. However, the country can count on the support of loyal ally America.