China’s decision to send fighter jets across the median line of the Taiwan Strait on Sunday was intended to show Beijing’s dissatisfaction over warming Taiwan-US relations, a military expert said yesterday.
Two Chinese People’s Liberation Army Air Force J-11 fighter jets crossed the median line and entered Taiwan’s airspace at 11am on Sunday.
It was the first time since 1999 that the Chinese military had intentionally crossed the median line of the waterway, military sources said.
Chieh Chung (揭仲), a senior assistant research fellow at the National Policy Foundation, a think tank affiliated with the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT), yesterday said that the operation reflected Beijing’s concern over more robust US support for Taiwan.
Foreign media have reported that the US will soon agree to Taiwan’s request to buy more than 60 F-16s, which would be the first US sale of new aircraft since 1992.
In addition, the two nations are holding a series of events this year in Taipei and Washington to mark the 40th anniversary of the Taiwan Relations Act, which serves as the basis of unofficial relations between Taiwan and the US.
These examples of warming ties have angered China and it responded by sending fighter jets over the median line, contravening a long-held understanding on the issue, Chieh said.
“It was meant to draw a red line, to tell the US not to ever cross it again,” he said.
A similar maneuver last occurred in 1999, when then-president Lee Teng-hui (李登輝) commented that Taiwan and China have a “special state-to-state” relationship.
That also angered Beijing, which later held exercises in the Taiwan Strait and sent military aircraft across the median line, Chieh said.
National Chung Cheng University Institute of Strategic and International Affairs assistant professor Lin Ying-yu (林穎佑) said that the median line issue also reflected a shift in the cross-strait military balance.
The air force had full control over the Taiwan Strait for decades, which made it impossible for Chinese jets to cross the line, but that has changed as Beijing has gained the upper hand in the cross-strait military balance, he said.
The concept of the median line was created in 1955 by US general Benjamin Davis Jr, commander of the US’ 13th Air Force, which was then based in Taipei, Chinese-language Military Link Magazine editor-in-chief Chen Wei-hao (陳維浩) said.
Since then, it has been very dangerous for Chinese aircraft to cross the line, because it would put them at a serious disadvantage as they would be targeted by Taiwanese fighters and radar, he said, adding that therefore, such intrusions rarely occurred.
Previous intrusions only lasted briefly and mainly occurred due to poor weather conditions, and on such occasions Chinese jets often returned to their side of the Taiwan Strait immediately after been warned by their Taiwanese counterparts, Chen said.
However, Sunday’s incident did not fall into that category and was a clear provocation, he said.
Chinese aircraft returned to China’s side of the median line only after receiving multiple radio warnings, the Ministry of National Defense said.
The intrusion triggered a 12-minute standoff between Taiwanese and Chinese warplanes, government officials said.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching