A Chinese civilian aircraft flying near Lienchiang County’s Dongyin Island (東引) earlier this month was likely meant as a provocation or a test of Taiwan’s combat readiness, military officials said on Tuesday.
Ministry of National Defense (MND) spokesman Shih Shun-wen (史順文) told a news conference that the military could not rule out that China tried to test whether Taiwan would respond to the flyby.
“Whether it was meant as a provocation or a test, the nation’s armed forces are always ready and have prepared contingencies for all kinds of scenarios,” he said.
Photo: CNA
The Feb. 5 flight was confirmed by the ministry a day later.
Residents on the island, near the coast of China’s Fujian Province, told Chinese-language media that they could hear and see the aircraft, spurring speculations that it entered Taiwan’s territorial airspace.
Local media reported that the low-flying plane evaded radar when entering Taiwan’s airspace, but the military denied that allegation.
Air force Chief of Staff Huang Chih-wei (黃志偉) on Tuesday said that the military identified the aircraft as a civilian Y-12 light twin-engine plane, adding that it came near Dongyin, but did not enter Taiwanese airspace.
Military units on the island took “appropriate measures to monitor the aircraft’s movements to safeguard national security,” he said, without elaborating, citing the sensitivity of the issue.
Unlike after Chinese incursions into Taiwan’s air defense identification zone, the military did not reveal the Y-12s flight path.
A country’s territorial airspace extends 12 nautical miles (22.2km) from the coastline of its territory. Countries have the right to attack any hostile aircraft that enters its territorial airspace without seeking permission.
Dongyin, part of the Matsu archipelago, is less than 50km east of China’s coast and about 185km northwest of Keelung.
Defense expert Lin Ying-yu (林穎佑) said that by sending a civilian aircraft near Taiwan’s territorial airspace, Beijing was engaging in so-called gray-zone warfare, staying below the threshold of traditional warfare.
Such tactics make it difficult for the defending nation to decide whether to answer with military force or police action, prolonging the time it takes to respond, he said.
Lin called on the military to work closely with other government units to implement a unified strategy to respond to such threats.
The military has spotted two Chinese warships operating in waters near Penghu County in the Taiwan Strait and sent its own naval and air forces to monitor the vessels, the Ministry of National Defense (MND) said. Beijing sends warships and warplanes into the waters and skies around Taiwan on an almost daily basis, drawing condemnation from Taipei. While the ministry offers daily updates on the locations of Chinese military aircraft, it only rarely gives details of where Chinese warships are operating, generally only when it detects aircraft carriers, as happened last week. A Chinese destroyer and a frigate entered waters to the southwest
A magnitude 6.1 earthquake struck off the coast of Yilan County at 8:39pm tonight, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said, with no immediate reports of damage or injuries. The epicenter was 38.7km east-northeast of Yilan County Hall at a focal depth of 98.3km, the CWA’s Seismological Center said. The quake’s maximum intensity, which gauges the actual physical effect of a seismic event, was a level 4 on Taiwan’s 7-tier intensity scale, the center said. That intensity level was recorded in Yilan County’s Nanao Township (南澳), Hsinchu County’s Guansi Township (關西), Nantou County’s Hehuanshan (合歡山) and Hualien County’s Yanliao (鹽寮). An intensity of 3 was
Instead of focusing solely on the threat of a full-scale military invasion, the US and its allies must prepare for a potential Chinese “quarantine” of Taiwan enforced through customs inspections, Stanford University Hoover fellow Eyck Freymann said in a Foreign Affairs article published on Wednesday. China could use various “gray zone” tactics in “reconfiguring the regional and ultimately the global economic order without a war,” said Freymann, who is also a nonresident research fellow at the US Naval War College. China might seize control of Taiwan’s links to the outside world by requiring all flights and ships entering or leaving Taiwan
The next minimum wage hike is expected to exceed NT$30,000, President William Lai (賴清德) said yesterday during an award ceremony honoring “model workers,” including migrant workers, at the Presidential Office ahead of Workers’ Day today. Lai said he wished to thank the awardees on behalf of the nation and extend his most sincere respect for their hard work, on which Taiwan’s prosperity has been built. Lai specifically thanked 10 migrant workers selected for the award, saying that although they left their home countries to further their own goals, their efforts have benefited Taiwan as well. The nation’s industrial sector and small businesses lay
RSS