Chinese warplane incursions into Taiwan’s air defense identification zone nearly doubled last year, with a surge in fighter jet and bomber sorties as Beijing intensified threats toward the nation.
Relations have been icy for years under Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平), but last year saw a deeper deterioration, as Xi’s military ramped up incursions and launched the largest war games in decades to protest against a visit by US House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi in August.
China sent 1,727 planes into Taiwan’s air defense identification zone last year, according to a database based on daily updates released by the Ministry of National Defense.
Photo: EPA-EFE / Ministry of National Defense
That compares with about 960 incursions in 2021 and 380 in 2020.
Fighter jet sorties more than doubled from 538 in 2021 to 1,241 last year, while incursions by bombers, including the nuclear-capable H6, increased from 60 to 101.
Last year also witnessed the first incursions by drones, with all 71 reported by the military coming after Pelosi’s visit.
Military analysts say China has used the incursions to probe Taiwan’s defenses, exhaust its aging air force and voice displeasure over US support for Taipei.
The Chinese “want to show their determination, their will and to coerce the United States: don’t get too close to their red lines, don’t cross their red lines,” former chief of the general staff Admiral Lee Hsi-ming (李喜明) said.
The US recognizes China over Taiwan diplomatically, but remains Taipei’s most important ally.
It opposes any forced change to Taiwan’s status and is bound by the Taiwan Relations Act to supply the nation with the means to defend itself.
Support for Taiwan is a rare issue of bipartisan consensus in Washington and there has been growing alarm over whether China might resort to a military solution, a fear heightened by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Washington has maintained a policy of “strategic ambiguity” toward Taiwan, deliberately making no firm commitment on whether it would come to its defense.
That strategy was aimed at making Beijing think twice about the costs of any invasion, and also to deter Taiwan from formally declaring independence.
US President Joe Biden has been mercurial on the issue of strategic ambiguity.
He has repeatedly said US troops would come to Taiwan’s aid in the event of a Chinese invasion, only for the White House to walk back his comments.
China has used warplane incursions to voice its displeasure about specific events. It sent 71 warplanes to conduct a “strike exercise” on Dec. 25 in response to what it described as “escalating collusion and provocations” by Washington and Taipei.
That came days after Biden signed off on up to US$10 billion in military aid to Taiwan.
August saw a record 440 sorties by Chinese warplanes, the same month Pelosi became the highest-ranking US lawmaker to visit Taiwan in 25 years.
A global survey showed that 60 percent of Taiwanese had attained higher education, second only to Canada, the Ministry of the Interior said. Taiwan easily surpassed the global average of 43 percent and ranked ahead of major economies, including Japan, South Korea and the US, data from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) for 2024 showed. Taiwan has a high literacy rate, data released by the ministry showed. As of the end of last year, Taiwan had 20.617 million people aged 15 or older, accounting for 88.5 percent of the total population, with a literacy rate of 99.4 percent, the data
CCP ‘PAWN’? Beijing could use the KMT chairwoman’s visit to signal to the world that many people in Taiwan support the ‘one China’ principle, an academic said Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) yesterday arrived in China for a “peace” mission and potential meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平), while a Taiwanese minister detailed the number of Chinese warships currently deployed around the nation. Cheng is visiting at a time of increased Chinese military pressure on Taiwan, as the opposition-dominated Legislative Yuan stalls a government plan for US$40 billion in extra defense spending. Speaking to reporters before going to the airport, Cheng said she was going on a “historic journey for peace,” but added that some people felt uneasy about her trip. “If you truly love Taiwan,
NEW LOW: The council in 2024 based predictions on a pessimistic estimate for the nation’s total fertility rate of 0.84, but last year that rate was 0.69, 17 percent lower An expected National Development Council (NDC) report expects the nation’s population to drop below 12 million by 2065, with the old-age dependency ratio to top 100 percent sooner than 2070, sources said yesterday. The council is slated to release its latest population projections in August, using an ultra-low fertility model, the sources said. The previous report projected that Taiwan’s population would fall to 14.37 million by 2070, but based on a new estimate of the total fertility rate (TFR) — the average number of children born to a woman over her lifetime — the population is expected to reach 12 million by
INTENSIFYING THREATS: Beijing’s tactics include massive attacks on the government service network, aircraft and naval vessel incursions and damaging undersea cables China is prepared to interfere in November’s nine-in-one local elections by launching massive attacks on the Taiwanese government’s service network (GSN), a report published by the National Security Bureau showed. The report was submitted to the Legislative Yuan ahead of the bureau’s scheduled briefing at the Foreign Affairs and National Defense Committee tomorrow. The national security team has identified about 13,000 suspicious Internet accounts and 860,000 disputed messages, the bureau said of China’s cognitive warfare against Taiwan. The disputed messages focus on major foreign affairs, national defense and economic issues, which were produced using generative artificial intelligence (AI) and distributed through Chinese
RSS