More than three dozen Chinese fighter jets, bombers and antisubmarine patrol craft entered Taiwan’s air-defence identification zone from multiple directions in recent days, amid heated rhetoric from Chinese state media.
In response,
Taiwan scrambled jets numerous times and activated an air-defence missile
system. On Monday, Chinese aircraft again entered Taiwanese airspace three
times while a U.S. reconnaissance aircraft patrolled nearby, local media
reported, as the risk of armed confrontation once again increases in the global
flashpoint.
The Chinese
military flights coincided with the visit to Taipei by U.S. undersecretary of
state Keith Krach, and marked an unusual display of hostility by Beijing, which
claims Taiwan as its territory and has never relinquished the use of force to
bring about unification with the mainland.
On Monday,
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin rejected the idea of a median
marker in the Taiwan Strait, an unofficial concept that Beijing had in large
measure tacitly acknowledged in recent years.
“Taiwan is an
inseparable part of Chinese territory,” Mr. Wang said. “The so-called midline
of the Strait does not exist.” Chinese aircraft had only crossed that line
three times in the past few decades: in 1999, March, 2019 and again in February
of this year.
China's air force has released a video showing nuclear-capable
H-6 bombers carrying out a simulated attack on what appears to be Andersen Air
Force Base on the U.S. Pacific island of Guam.REUTERS
China’s actions “clearly constitute a threat
of force, which is part of their verbal attacks and military threats,”
Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen said Sunday, while Pentagon spokesman John
Supple criticized Beijing for “aggressive and destabilizing” conduct.
Taiwan’s defence ministry has publicly stated
its right to “self-defence and to counter attack” although it has said it will
follow a principle of “no escalation of conflict and no triggering incidents.”
But China’s entry into Taiwan’s airspace
constitutes “semi-war behaviour,” said Michael Tsai, a former Taiwan defence
minister.
The Chinese jets came within 68 kilometres of
Taiwanese land. “That’s less than two or three minutes' flying distance,” Mr.
Tsai said in an interview. If People’s Liberation Army warplanes were to
overfly the island, “the status of war would be created,” he said. He recalled
that in 1996, after China fired missiles near Taiwan, the U.S. sent two
aircraft carrier battle groups to nearby waters. He called on Washington to
once again “do something to deter China from taking further action against
Taiwan.”
China has long maintained that it seeks
peaceful unification with Taiwan, but will resort to “non-peaceful means” if it
decides peaceable solutions are no longer possible or Taiwan is moving toward
secession.
But Ms. Tsai, the Taiwanese President, has
refused to support a Beijing formulation of a 1992-era consensus over Taiwan’s
status, while the Donald Trump administration in the U.S. has sent senior
delegations to Taiwan and agreed to new arms sales, as the Pentagon assembles a
“Fortress Taiwan” strategy, a term described in a Reuters report.
Recent events have “pushed China to a point
where sending a warning becomes a must. If the U.S. and Taiwan keep allowing
both sides to conduct political visits to challenge the ‘one China’ principle,
a military response from mainland China will be inevitable,” said Xin Qiang,
director of the Center for Studies of Taiwan at Fudan University.
He faulted Taipei and Washington for moving in
the direction of Taiwanese independence. “There’s no way mainland China will be
silent in the face of all these,” he said, warning that “the risk of war is
increasing,” as greater military deployments elevate tensions and raise the
possibility of accident.
“With the lack of effective channels for
communication and the fundamental lack of political trust between the mainland
and Taiwan, it’s almost certain that clashes will continue to worsen,” he said.
Ms. Tsai has said Taiwan is already “an
independent country.”
Inside China, however, some have begun to use
bellicose language. “Tsai Ing-wen should reflect on herself, or she will be the
Taiwan ‘president’ deposed by PLA,” Hu Xijin, the editor of the Communist
Party-run Global Times, wrote on Twitter.
Beijing “is sending a clear message: We will
no longer tolerate the increased U.S.-Taiwan collusion and will stop it with
military pressure,” he also wrote on China’s Twitter-like Weibo service. “The
PLA fighter jets are only one step away from flying over Taiwan island.”
Armed conflict remains a small possibility at
the moment, said Zhu Songling, director of the Taiwan Research Institute at
Beijing Union University. Beijing continues to have “enough patience on this
issue,” he said. But if China does “resort to military action, [Taiwan] will
suffer from great calamity, a complete annihilation.”
The Chinese fighter-jet incursions may be
better seen as “a new round of psychological warfare against Taiwan” by China,
and a chance to probe the island’s military responses, said J. Michael Cole, a
senior fellow at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute.
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