About eight of China's Su-27 fighter planes crossed the median line of the Taiwan Strait on July 6, prompting Taiwan's air force to send a retaliatory sortie a week later, intelligence sources told the Taipei Times yesterday.
The Su-27s, which left their bases in four separate sorties, did not make any further advances after crossing the imaginary middle line of the body of water separating the two sides, the sources said.
The incident was the third of its kind since last July when then-president Lee Teng-hui (
They were considered to be China's response to Lee's remark. The fighter planes involved were believed to be Jian-7s or Jian-8s modeled on Russian-made MiG fighters.
On July 6, three days before the anniversary of Lee's controversial statement, the Chinese air force sent a group of much more formidable fighter planes to repeat the missions of nearly a year earlier.
Four sorties of the faster, Russian-made advanced Su-27 planes with their longer range, better control and greater firepower, are said to have crossed the median line of the Strait in sequence, moving northward along Taiwan's side of the line before flying back to China.
The aircraft traversed the middle line at a point off the Penghu islands, before encountering, during their following northward movement, F-16 fighters sent by Taiwan's air force, said the sources.
Although aircraft from the opposing sides did not engage, tit-for-tat "retaliation" sorties were flown by Taiwan's air force a week later.
This occurred in mid-July, and consisted of an unidentified number of Taiwan's fighter planes, including IDFs and F-16s, crossing the median line of the Strait for the first time in recent years and moving toward China, the sources said.
Surprisingly, the Chinese air force did not respond immediately to the seemingly hostile approach of the Taiwanese fighter planes, merely monitoring and tracking them on their air defense radar.
The Taiwan fighter planes later turned around, returning to their bases on the island without encountering an approach of their Chinese counterparts, as had been reported in some Chinese newspapers, according to the sources.
While it failed to make an immediate response to the incident, the Chinese air force seemed to be seeking to save face by sending on Aug. 12 an unidentified number of Jian-8 planes to approach the middle line of the Taiwan Strait.
The latter incident occurred just one day before President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) started his two-week trip to foreign diplomatic allies.
Following the face-saving move, the Chinese authorities launched for the first time in five decades an air raid exercise in Shanghai.
Former chairman of the KMT Business Management Committee Liu Tai-yin (劉泰英), Lee Teng-hui's right-hand man, remarked last summer that if China thinks it has the ability to launch missile attacks against Taiwan, then Taiwan also had the capability to launch counterattacks against Chinese cities such as Hong Kong and Shanghai.
Liu made the remarks against the backdrop of escalating tensions following Lee's "special state-to-state" announcement.
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