Taiwan’s Defense Ministry announced that in the last 24 hours at 6am local time (11pm on Thursday in Italy) a total of 36 Chinese military aircraft were active around the island, the highest number since the beginning of the year. . The same source also specified that 13 planes crossed the median line of the Taiwan Strait. Already yesterday evening the Taipei armed forces reported in a note that they had traced on radar the presence of “20 aircraft of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army of various types” (such as Su-30, Y-8, UAV), engaged in an unprecedented night flight for a “joint combat patrol”.
The ministry then reported six Chinese warships around the island, in what is now a constant presence. Relations between the two sides of the Taiwan Strait have become difficult since the 2016 election in Taipei of President Tsai Ing-wen, with China cutting off high-level communications due to its position that the island was ” already independent”, seen by Beijing as a red line
impassable.
His deputy William Lai, who China considers a “troublemaker” and a “dangerous separatist”, was elected to the presidency in January despite Chinese warnings that his election would be a choice between peace and war. Lai and his vice president-elect Hsiao Bi-khim, members of the Democratic Progressive Party, will take office on May 20. Hsiao, Taiwan’s former de facto ambassador to the US, has also traveled to the Czech Republic and to the European Parliament in Strasbourg in recent days, according to photos published on
by European politicians. China’s Taiwan Affairs Bureau on Tuesday criticized Hsiao for his visit to the Czech Republic, saying his purpose was to serve “Taiwan independence, useless for peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait.”
On Wednesday, during a hearing in the US House, the commander of American forces in the Indo-Pacific John Aquilino remarked that Chinese troops have simulated activities in recent years that could lead to an attack against Taipei, putting warn that Beijing is building a military and nuclear arsenal at a speed not seen since the Second World War “to be ready to invade Taiwan by 2027”, the centenary year of the founding of the People’s Liberation Army. And then there is “the increasingly aggressive coercive campaign, which deploys more ships nearby, crossing the center line with their air assets. These are the measures necessary to make the Taiwanese capitulate,” Aquilino noted.
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