Taiwan responded by launching a five-day ‘rapid response’ drill, starting on Monday.
The Chinese regime sent a large number of military aircraft and warships toward Taiwan on Monday, a show of force that Beijing described as a response to the recent actions by the United States regarding the self-governed island, which the regime claims as its own.
Taipei condemned Beijing’s military maneuvers, accusing it of using excuses to intimidate the island. Taiwan’s Ministry of National Defense reported that the Chinese military carried out two combat readiness patrols in a single day, one in the morning and another in the afternoon.
According to Taiwan’s defense ministry, 54 military aircraft were dispatched by China that day. Among them, 42 crossed the Taiwan Strait’s median line, an unofficial boundary drawn by the U.S. military decades ago to help de-escalate tensions between Taipei and Beijing. Taiwan also tracked nine Chinese military vessels and two Chinese balloons.
In recent years, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has ramped up military pressure on Taiwan, with its warplanes flying in skies near Taiwan on a nearly daily basis, aiming to wear down the island’s defenses and its people’s morale.
But some analysts say Monday’s deployments were still unusual in terms of their scale.
“For the first time on record, two joint combat readiness patrols were conducted in one day,” K. Tristan Tang, a research associate at Taiwan’s Research Project on China’s Defense Affairs, wrote on social media platform X.
Beijing said its military operations surrounding Taiwan were a response to the recent actions by the United States, particularly the updates of the Taiwan section on the State Department website’s fact sheet, which removed the phrase “we do not support Taiwan independence.”
Mao Ning, spokesperson for China’s foreign ministry, told reporters on Monday that these deployments were also a “serious warning” to what Beijing calls pro-separatist forces in Taiwan.
The CCP, which has never ruled Taiwan, claims the self-ruled island as its own territory, and its top leader, Xi Jinping, never ruled out the use of force to bring the democratically governed island under the regime’s control.
To pressure Taiwan into accepting its communist rule, Beijing has sought to isolate Taiwan on the world stage. That includes repeatedly warning foreign nations to adhere to its “One China principle,” which demands recognition of the CCP’s claim to sovereignty over Taiwan.
By Dorothy Li
