Thirty-three Chinese aircraft and five ships were detected around Taiwan in the 24-hour period before 6am, the Ministry of National Defense said today, after Beijing criticized President William Lai (賴清德) for calling Taiwan a country.
Of the aircraft, 24 crossed the median line of the Taiwan Strait and entered Taiwan’s northern, southwestern and eastern air defense identification zones, the ministry said in a statement.
At about 1pm yesterday, Taiwanese fishers reportedly spotted two Chinese vessels 50 nautical miles (92.6km) off the coast of Hualien.
Photo courtesy of the Ministry of National Defense
In addition, 21 aircraft, including Su-30 fighters and Shaanxi KJ-500 airborne early warning and control aircraft, were detected operating near Taiwan between 9:40am and noon today, the ministry said, adding that 16 of them crossed the median line and entered Taiwan’s northern, central, southwestern and eastern air defense identification zones.
China was “harassing” the airspace and waters around Taiwan in the name of “joint combat readiness patrols,” it said.
The armed forces “monitored the situation and employed [patrol] aircraft, navy vessels and coastal missile systems in response to the detected activities,” the ministry said.
Lai has since Sunday given two speeches in what is scheduled to be a series of 10 on “uniting the country.”
In his first speech, Lai said Taiwan is "of course a country" and that China has no legal or historical right to claim it.
China's Taiwan Affairs Office (TAO) on Monday said that Lai was intentionally distorting history to promote his “independence agenda” and that Taiwan has never been a country.
"It was a 'Taiwan independence' declaration that blatantly incited cross-strait confrontation, and a hodgepodge of 'Taiwan independence' fallacies and heresies full of errors and omissions," the office said in a statement.
"The fallacies fabricated by Lai in contravention of history, reality and jurisprudence will only be swept into the rubbish heap of history," it said.
Lai was simply stating historical facts and Beijing's belief that Taiwan has been Chinese since ancient times and is not a country is "just a fabricated lie without any basis," the Mainland Affairs Council said in a statement.
"We call on the Chinese communist authorities to face up to the fact that the Republic of China [Taiwan] objectively exists and the status quo in the Taiwan Strait that 'the two sides are not subordinate to each other,'" it said.
Meanwhile, Beijing has said that it is impossible to "invade" what is already Chinese land.
Speaking yesterday to European ambassadors in Beijing, Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) said he was alarmed that the Democratic Progressive Party was "doing everything they can to try to move towards Taiwan independence, which is very dangerous."
There has been an uptick in Chinese military activity around Taiwan.
China's last war games around the nation were in April, and its air force and navy operate around Taiwan on a daily basis, sometimes using dozens of warplanes, the defense ministry has said.
Asked about US comments that Chinese drills are preparations for an attack on Taiwan, TAO spokesperson Zhu Fenglian (朱鳳蓮) told a separate briefing in Beijing that "Taiwan is a part of China; there is no invasion to speak of."
Additional reporting by Wang Chun-chi
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