TAIPEI, Taiwan—China’s military sent 39 planes and three ships toward Taiwan in a 24-hour display of force directed at the island, Taiwan’s defense ministry said Thursday.
The Chinese communist regime’s military harassment of self-ruled Taiwan, which it claims is its own territory, has intensified in recent years, and the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) army has sent planes or ships toward the island on a near-daily basis.
Between 6 a.m. Wednesday and 6 a.m. Thursday, 30 of the Chinese planes crossed the median of the Taiwan Strait, an unofficial boundary once tacitly accepted by both sides, according to Taiwan’s Ministry of National Defense.
Those planes flew to the island’s southwest and then horizontally all the way to the southeastern side before doubling back, according to a diagram of the flight patterns provided by Taiwan. Among the planes were 21 J-16 fighter jets, four H-6 bombers, and two early-warning aircraft.
Taiwan said it monitored the Chinese moves through its land-based missile systems, as well as on its own navy vessels.
The CCP’s military held large military exercises in August in response to U.S. House speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan. Beijing views visits from foreign governments to the island as a challenge to the CCP’s claim of sovereignty.
The CCP claims the island as its own, despite the fact that Taiwan is a de facto independent country, with its own military, democratically-elected government, and constitution.
In its largest military exercises aimed at Taiwan in decades, the CCP sailed ships and flew aircraft regularly across the median of the strait and even fired missiles over Taiwan itself that ended up landing in Japan’s exclusive economic zone.
