Taiwan reported this Monday a record number in terms of aircraft and warship raids Chinese from the Asian giant, with a total of 103 aircraft and 9 ships of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA, Chinese Army) in the vicinity of the island.
The Taiwanese Ministry of Defense reported today at 06:00 local time, in a statement, the presence in the last 24 hours of 103 aircraft in the vicinity of the island, which marks a record with respect to the 91 aircraft detected last year. April 10th.
A total of 40 of them crossed the median line of the Taiwan Strait, an unofficial demarcation tacitly accepted by Taipei and Beijing in recent decades but that Chinese fighters have been accustomed to overtaking for a year in their raids, which have become routine in recent months.
This incursion is added to those carried out last week, when the military portfolio reported on different days around 200 aircraft and 50 warships coming from the other side of the Strait, which represented an increase in tension that coincides with the recent passage of the Chinese aircraft carrier Shandong through the waters to the east of the territory.
Local researcher Chieh Chung, recently quoted by the island agency CNA, pointed out that the constant incursions of Chinese Army planes into the Taiwanese Air Identification Zone (ADIZ) are aimed at “pressuring and provoking Taiwan,” and that the most recent ones are “a response to the transit through the Taiwan Strait carried out by a US destroyer and a Canadian frigate last Saturday.”
Last August, the Chinese Army carried out military exercises by sea and air around Taiwan in response to the stops in the United States of the Taiwanese vice president, William Lai - candidate for the Presidency in the next elections -, whom he accused of “seeking American support for the independence of Taiwan.”
The Shandong, which became the Asian country’s second aircraft carrier in 2019, was present in the military maneuvers that China organized around Taiwan last spring to simulate a blockade of the island.
Taiwan - where the Chinese nationalist army retreated after defeat by communist troops in the civil war - has been governed autonomously since 1949, although China claims sovereignty over the islandwhich he considers a rebellious province for whose “reunification” he has not ruled out the use of force.
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