Tension as China steps up flights near Taiwan
CHINA has been showing a new intensity and military sophistication as it steps up its harassment of Taiwan, with record numbers of military flights near the island over the last week.
China’s People’s Liberation Army flew 56 planes in international airspace off the southwest coast of Taiwan on Monday, setting a new record and capping four days of sustained pressure involving 149 flights.
The actions came as China, with growing diplomatic and military power, faces greater pushback from countries in the region and as Taiwan pleads for more global support and recognition. The US called China’s latest actions “risky” and “destabilising”, while China – which claims Taiwan as its own and asserts its territorial ambitions in the region – responded that America selling weapons to Taiwan and its ships navigating the Taiwan Strait were provocative.
At the same time as the flights, the US stepped up naval manoeuvres in the Indo-Pacific with its allies, challenging Beijing’s territorial claims in critical waterways.
Taiwanese defence minister Chiu Kuo-cheng said that the situation “is the most severe in the 40 years since
I’ve enlisted”. While most agree that war is not imminent, Taiwanese president Tsai Ing-wen warned more was at stake if Beijing made good on past threats to seize the island by force if necessary.
“If Taiwan were to fall, the consequences would be catastrophic for regional peace and the democratic alliance system,” she wrote in an impassioned article in Foreign Affairs magazine.
“It would signal that in today’s global contest of values, authoritarianism has the upper hand over democracy.”
China regularly flies military aircraft into Taiwan’s “air defence identification zone” although previous flights have usually involved a handful of planes at most.
Perhaps more significant than the number of planes was the make-up of the group, with fighters, bombers and airborne early warning aircraft, Euan Graham, a defence analyst with the International Institute for Strategic Studies in Singapore, said.
Controlling Taiwan and its airspace is key to China’s strategy. The manoeuvres bring the total number of flights to more than 815 since Taiwan started releasing the numbers a little more than a year ago.