Chinese military flights into a sensitive area near Taiwan last month fell to the lowest level of President William Lai’s (賴清德) tenure, an indication that the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) is tweaking its training focus.
The PLA last month sent an average of 5.4 aircraft per day across the median line of the Taiwan Strait, according to data from the Ministry of National Defense. That was the fewest since just before Lai assumed the presidency in May 2024.
The decline could be a sign that over the past few years the PLA has finished most of its basic long-distance flight training, said Chieh Chung (揭仲), an associate researcher at the Institute for National Defense and Security Research, a military think tank.
Photo courtesy of the Ministry of National Defense
“More experienced pilots can now devote more time to tactical training, rather than training aimed at increasing individual flight hours,” he said.
China has ramped up its military intimidation of Lai’s administration, holding several rounds of major exercises during his time in office.
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) has been conducting a purge of the military’s top ranks, most recently taking down the nation’s top general. In October last year, Xi agreed to a one-year truce in a trade dispute with US President Donald Trump.
Those developments were probably unrelated to recent training activity by PLA warplanes, said Drew Thompson, a senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore.
“The reduction in flights is not accompanied by a corresponding softening of Beijing’s rhetoric towards Taiwan or President Lai, so I am skeptical that it is politically motivated,” he said.
The growing complexity of China’s joint operations among aircraft is more concerning than the drop in flights, said Lin Ying-yu (林穎佑), an associate professor at the Graduate Institute of International Affairs and Strategic Studies at Tamkang University.
“We are now seeing more fighter jets conducting training alongside early warning aircraft,” Lin said, a sophisticated drill that would give Chinese warplanes more targeting options.
“You can’t measure the pressure based on the number of sorties alone,” he added.
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