China sent another 20 fighter jets into Taiwan’s Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ) on Oct. 2, just one day after the communist regime deployed 38 fighter jets over the island nation in the largest display of force to date.
In a government statement issued on Oct. 2, the Taiwanese military said the aircraft involved included 14 J-16 jets, 4 SU-30 planes, and 2 anti-submarine aircraft.
That incursion was followed by China’s largest display of force this year after the communist authorities sent dozens of military jets that included multiple H-6 bombers with nuclear capabilities.
Taiwan said it responded to the invasion by deploying air patrol forces and tracking the Chinese aircraft on its air defense systems, according to the Taiwanese Ministry of National Defense.
Taiwan said the Oct. 1 incursion came in two waves and happened on the same day that China commemorated the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) takeover of the mainland in the late 1940s.
During the CCP’s first maneuver, 25 fighter jets crossed the nation’s ADIZ, Taiwan said. The second wave of hostility included an additional 13 planes later that night.
The ADIZ is a specific area beyond a country’s sovereign territory within which the country requires the identification, location, and air traffic control of aircraft in the interest of its national security.
Taiwan had sharply criticized China on Oct. 2 after the previous day’s intrusion. The self-ruled island has complained about a year or more of repeated missions by China’s air force, often in the southwestern part of its ADIZ close to the Taiwan-controlled Pratas Islands.
“China has been wantonly engaged in military aggression, damaging regional peace,” Taiwan Premier Su Tseng-chang told reporters on Saturday.
The first batch of Chinese aircraft flew in an area close to the Pratas Islands, with the two bombers flying closest to the atoll, according to a map issued by the Taiwanese defense ministry.
The second group flew down into the Bashi Channel that separates Taiwan from the Philippines, a key waterway that links the Pacific with the disputed South China Sea.
China has sent military planes toward the self-ruled island that it has claimed is part of its territory on a near-daily basis in the last couple of years, and stepped up military harassment with drills.
The CCP claims that Taiwan is its territory, in spite of the fact that Taiwan has been self-governing since 1949, and that China has never governed Taiwan.
Beijing labels any foreign government’s engagement with Taiwan as a challenge to its sovereignty. It squeezes Taiwan’s international space, trying to isolate the Asian democracy from global groups like the World Health Organization. China also runs afoul of nations that wish to establish closer ties with Taiwan, like Lithuania and Japan, who donated vaccines to Taiwan this year.
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