Chinese flew towards Taiwan: whether to escalate

Ten Chinese aircraft crossed the median line of the Taiwan Strait, the island’s defense ministry said. For its part, Taiwan sent planes to alert nine Chinese fighter jets and one drone that breached an unofficial cross-strait barrier.

Taiwan’s Ministry of Defense said ten Chinese aircraft crossed the median line of the Taiwan Strait, usually the unofficial barrier between the mainland and the island.

Nine Chinese fighter jets and one military drone crossed the median line in the 24 hours before 6 a.m. Saturday, Taiwan’s ministry said in a daily report on China’s military activities.

Taipei sent planes to warn the Chinese planes while missile systems tracked them, the island’s defense ministry said, using standard language for its response, according to The Guardian.

Taiwan, which China considers its own territory, has complained in recent years about near-daily flights by the Chinese air force near the island, often in the southwestern part of its air defense identification zone.

Beijing has threatened retaliation if Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen, who is currently traveling across the Americas, meets with US House Speaker Kevin McCarthy. She is expected to meet him in Los Angeles on her way back to Taipei from Central America.

China staged military exercises around Taiwan in August after then-Speaker of the US House of Representatives Democrat Nancy Pelosi visited Taipei and continued military operations near Taiwan, albeit on a smaller scale, The Guardian recalls.

A senior Taiwanese official told Reuters this week that China was unlikely to repeat such a large exercise, but that preparations had been made in case China reacted “irrationally”.

Separately, nine Chinese aircraft crossed the median line on Friday on alert patrols that Taiwan’s defense ministry said “deliberately created tension” and undermined peace and stability.

For its part, China on Friday expressed strong opposition to Taiwan’s regional leader Tsai Ing-wen’s “transit trip” through the United States, which violates the “one China” principle, and urged Washington to keep its word and take concrete action to uphold the political foundation of Sino-US relations.

This statement by Beijing, notes the Chinese edition of Global Times, came after Tsai Ing-wen was awarded by the American think tank during a trip through New York on her way to Guatemala and Belize.

On Friday, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning said at a press briefing, “We strongly oppose any visit by a Taiwanese leader to the United States, regardless of justification or pretext, and strongly oppose all forms of US contact with Taiwanese authorities that violate the principle of one China”.

What happened proves that Cai’s trip is not so much a “transit” as an attempt to achieve breakthroughs and promote “Taiwan independence,” notes Mao Ning: “No one and no force can prevent the reunification of China.”

Mao said the problem was not China’s overreaction, but blatant US connivance and support for the Taiwanese separatists.

Tsai Ing-wen received the “Global Leadership Award” Thursday from the Hudson Institute, a conservative US think tank that brought together highly anti-Chinese politicians such as former US President Donald Trump’s Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and senior adviser Miles Yu, according to the Global Times.

Liu Weidong, a fellow at the Institute of American Studies at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, told the Global Times Friday that the goal of Tsai Ing-wen’s approach is clear – to further tie Taiwanese separatists to US domestic politics. “Tsai has positioned herself as the representative of democracy in the Chinese community while discrediting the system on the mainland, and has carried out social mobilization in the US to put pressure on Americans: if you don’t support me, you don’t support democracy, and thus the self-proclaimed moral sense of the US false,” explained Liu Weidong.

Meanwhile, the White House said on Wednesday that Secretary of State Anthony Blinken still wants to visit China after postponing a trip last month, US media reported. Wang Yi, director of the office of the Foreign Affairs Commission of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China (CCP), reaffirmed China’s position on the Taiwan issue during a meeting with Stephen Orlins, president of the National Committee on US-China Relations, in Beijing.

Wang said the US should keep its word and take concrete action to uphold the political foundation of China-US relations.