China’s military sent its biggest daily sortie of bombers into the Taiwan Strait in at least two years in apparent show of displeasure over a visit by a key member of Japan’s ruling party.
The 18 H-6 strategic bombers — the most in Bloomberg-compiled data going back to September 2020 — were part of a sortie of 29 warplanes that the Ministry of National Defense said it detected as of early yesterday.
Three Chinese naval vessels were also spotted.
Photo: Reuters
Japan’s military said fighters on Monday were “scrambled to cope with a suspected intrusion into Japan’s airspace over the East China Sea,” although it did not name any country.
Over the weekend, Koichi Hagiuda became the most senior sitting ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) member to visit Taiwan in 19 years.
In a meeting on Saturday, President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) told the LDP’s policy chief that Taiwan would continue to deepen partnerships with Japan, and urged it to support Taiwan’s membership in the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership.
Hagiuda later said China should refrain from using force to change the “status quo” in the Taiwan Strait and Japan was determined to “bolster strike capabilities in an effort to strengthen deterrence.”
His visit came just days after Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida ordered a sharp hike in defense spending. The funding is set to be used for items such as stockpiling missiles capable of striking military targets in China, Russia and North Korea.
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