China’s newest aircraft carrier, the Shandong, crossed the Bashi Channel with its fleet and continued southward, the Japanese Ministry of Defense’s Joint Staff Office said yesterday.
From April 7 to Monday, 620 fighter jets and helicopters were launched from the carrier, 10 more than the office had reported on Monday.
However, the Ministry of National Defense (MND) said that it had not detected any military jets in Taiwan’s eastern or southeastern air defense identification zone (ADIZ) from 6am on Monday to 6am yesterday, adding that the additional jets must have operated outside Taiwan’s ADIZ.
Photo courtesy of the Japanese Ministry of Defense’s Joint Staff Office
As it usually does when Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) aircraft or ships operate in Taiwan’s vicinity, the MND launched air and naval patrols while using radar detection systems, it said.
Based on information from its joint intelligence and surveillance system, the MND on Monday said the fleet was spotted in the Western Pacific and was likely to continue sailing southeast of Taiwan.
The Shandong was part of military exercises launched by the PLA around Taiwan on April 8, one day after President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) returned from a 10-day overseas trip that included a meeting with US House of Representatives Speaker Kevin McCarthy in California.
The Shandong is being escorted by six ships: two Type 052D guided-missile destroyers, a Type 055 stealth guided-missile destroyer, two Type 054A guided-missile frigates and a Type 901 fast combat support ship.
Local reports said that Taiwan’s military on Monday mobilized forces on the Hengchun Peninsula (恆春半島), in the nation’s south, as a precaution after Shenyang J-15 fighters were spotted entering the southeastern corner of Taiwan’s ADIZ.
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
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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
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