Taiwan’s military repelled several Chinese fighter jets that crossed the median line of the Taiwan Strait that separates the island from the mainland.
The incursion comes amid a visit by U.S. Senator Rick Scott (R-Fla.) to Taiwan, which the Chinese communist regime condemned.
Taiwan’s Ministry of Defense said that its air force “forcefully expelled” the intruders and deployed ground-to-air missiles while monitoring the situation.
The ministry also said that the Chinese aircraft acted deliberately and provocatively, in a manner that “has seriously damaged regional peace and stability.”
The median line, also known as the Davis Line, is the midpoint in the Taiwan Strait that forms an unofficial maritime buffer between china and Taiwan. While China’s military regularly incurs into Taiwan’s air defense identification zone, direct crossings over the median line are less frequent. Such incidents have occurred a number of times since 1999, however.
In addition to traversing the median line, Chinese forces also made the unusual move of approaching from the northwest, flying straight across the line and circling until Taiwanese forces repelled them.
The incident follows a series of combat readiness exercises, patrols, and combat drills in the sea and airspace around Taiwan, which Chinese defense spokesperson Wu Qian said were a response to “collusion and provocations” by the United States and Taiwan.
The Chinese Communist Party (CCP), which currently rules mainland China as a one-party state, claims that Taiwan is part of its territory and aggressively condemns any action by the United States that it perceives as legitimizing Taiwan’s independence.
Nevertheless, Taiwan has its own flourishing democratic government, has been self-ruled since 1949, when the CCP took over China, and has never been under the control of the CCP.
CCP General Secretary Xi Jinping has vowed to unite Taiwan with the mainland regardless and has not ruled out the use of force in doing so. To that end, the CCP regularly sends military excursions into Taiwan’s air defense identification zone in the hope that such intimidation will whittle down the Taiwanese people’s resolve to resist forced unification.
The political military officers of the regime have also taken up the responsibility of promoting increasingly bellicose and propagandistic talking points regarding the future of Taiwan of late.
In the leadup to the incident, Chinese general Li Zuocheng told U.S. military leadership that China had “no room for compromise” on the issue of Taiwan independence and that China would “counterattack” any who supported it.
The remarks echoed similar sentiments from June, when Chinese Defense Minister Wei Fenghe threatened U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin that the CCP would “not hesitate to start a war” over Taiwan.
Taiwan’s political leadership has remained consistent through its trials and tribulations with China. Earlier in the month, Taiwan President Tsai Ing-Wen reiterated Taiwan’s commitment to self-determination everywhere.
“Unprecedented threats from authoritarian actors will not deter us in Taiwan from working with our partners around the world to uphold liberal values [and] strengthen democratic institutions,” Tsai said in a tweet.