Taiwan lives under constant threat of invasion by China (Representative)
taipei:
China sent 18 warplanes, including fighters and bombers, into Taiwan’s air defense zone on Friday, the island’s government said, in its second-largest one-day raid this year.
Taiwan lives under the constant threat of invasion from Beijing, which sees the self-ruled democratic island as part of its territory that will one day be recaptured, by force if necessary.
The last quarter of 2021 saw a spike in China’s raids on the Taiwan Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ), with the biggest one-day breakthrough on October 4 when 56 warplanes entered the zone.
On Friday, 18 Chinese aircraft, including 12 J-11 and J-16 fighter jets and two H-6 bombers, crossed the ADIZ, Taipei’s Defense Ministry said.
It was the second largest one-day sortie this year, after 39 fighters entered the zone on Jan. 23, according to a database compiled by AFP.
The ministry said it scrambled its own plane to broadcast warnings and deployed air defense missile systems to track the jets.
Taiwan did not start regularly publishing airstrike data until September 2020.
October 2021 remains the busiest month on record, with 196 raids, 149 of which took place in just four days, as Beijing celebrated its annual National Day.
China has stepped up pressure on Taiwan since Tsai Ing-wen was elected president in 2016, as it views the island as a sovereign nation and not part of Chinese territory.
Last year, Taiwan registered 969 raids by Chinese warplanes in its ADIZ, according to the AFP database — more than double the roughly 380 in 2020.
The figure so far for this year will already exceed 370 on Friday.
The ADIZ is not the same as Taiwan’s territorial airspace and covers a much larger area that overlaps with part of China’s own ADIZ.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by DailyExpertNews staff and has been published from a syndicated feed.)
