China has a rocket launch scheduled for today, with the path likely to cross Taiwan’s air defense identification zone, the Ministry of National Defense said yesterday.
The launch would be among at least a dozen Chinese satellite missions in the past 18 months that have passed over the zone or Taiwan, although none threatened national security as they had left the atmosphere by that stage in their flight.
The ministry first started making details of such launches public this year.
Photo : Chen Yu-fu, Taipei Times
Today’s mission is to take off from the Xichang Satellite Launch Center in China’s Sichuan Province, the ministry said, citing an official announcement by the Chinese government.
The Chinese information showed that rocket would travel over Taiwan’s air defense identification zone — a self-declared area in which a nation claims the right to identify, locate and control approaching foreign aircraft, but is not part of its territorial airspace as defined by international law — toward the western Pacific Ocean.
Chinese rocket launches are being made public to keep the public informed of such activities and other military movements by China in Taiwan’s vicinity, the ministry said.
The previous ministry announcement of a scheduled rocket launch by China was on June 21 for a June 22 launch.
The routine announcements began with a text alert to mobile phones on Jan. 9 for an event that was misidentified in English as a “missile flyover” rather than a satellite launch.
Critics said that the Jan. 9 alert was ill-advised and might have been politically motivated, as the presidential election was just four days later.
The military had not previously issued such alerts.
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