Taipei:
Taiwanese defense and coast guard officials said Thursday that dozens of Chinese warplanes and ships had been detected around the island, less than two weeks before Taiwan's self-governing inauguration of a new president.
China claims Taiwan as part of its territory and has said it would not rule out using force to bring the island under Beijing's control.
Taipei's announced Chinese military presence around the island, including another 23 warplanes and five naval vessels in the 24 hours leading up to 6 a.m., also came a day after a US warship sailed through the sensitive Taiwan Strait.
The coast guard in Taipei said late Thursday that it had detected 12 Chinese ships around the remote island of Kinmen.
Kinmen, administered by Taipei just five kilometers from the Chinese city of Xiamen, has seen heightened tensions in recent months, with Chinese coast guard ships maintaining a presence around it.
Taiwan's coast guard said a fleet of seven ships “belonging to China's maritime and fisheries departments entered our restricted waters” around 3 p.m. local time (0700 GMT), about 4 nautical miles southwest of Kinmen.
“We suspected that the fleet, along with three Chinese fishing boats, were engaged in maritime exercises,” the report said.
Around the same time, “another flotilla of four Chinese Coast Guard vessels entered our prohibited and restricted waters… and another vessel sailed outside our waters.”
The ships left about 90 minutes later, the coast guard said, noting that this was “the fourth formation of Chinese coast guard ships to sail in Kinmen waters in May.”
It was also the first time that Chinese coast guard ships “and other Chinese official ships” sailed together at the same time, the report said.
“This has seriously undermined peace, stability and navigational safety, hurt the feelings of people on both sides of the Strait and is not conducive to peaceful exchanges across the Taiwan Strait,” the coast guard said.
China has stepped up patrols around Kinmen following a series of deadly fishing incidents earlier this year.
A Chinese speedboat with four people on board capsized near Kinmen on February 14 while Taiwan's coast guard was pursuing it, killing two people.
In March, another Chinese boat capsized in the area, also killing two crew members.
Taiwan's coast guard had defended its actions, but the row has exacerbated tensions, which were already high after Taiwan's January elections won by Vice President Lai Ching-te.
Lai, like outgoing President Tsai Ing-wen, rejects China's claim to Taiwan.
Warship passage
Thursday's maritime presence around Kinmen came after Taiwan's Defense Ministry said it had detected nearly 20 Chinese warplanes and five naval vessels around the island in the 24 hours leading up to 6am (10pm GMT) on Thursday.
That coincided on Wednesday with a US warship sailing through the Taiwan Strait, a narrow 180 kilometer body of water that separates the island from China.
The destroyer USS Halsey “conducted a routine transit of the Taiwan Strait on May 8 through waters where freedom of navigation and overflight on the high seas applies in accordance with international law,” the U.S. 7th Fleet said.
It said the Halsey's passage “demonstrates the commitment of the United States to upholding the principle of freedom of navigation for all nations.”
Chinese Navy Colonel Li Xi, spokesman for the Eastern Theater Command, called the passage of the American warship a “public hype.”
He added in a statement late Wednesday that the Eastern Theater command had also organized naval and air forces “to monitor the passage of the American ship throughout the process.”
“Troops in theater remain on high alert at all times and resolutely safeguard national sovereignty and security,” the statement said.
China had warned before Taiwan's elections that Lai would bring “war and decay” to the island, making the run-up to his inauguration on May 20 a period of intense scrutiny.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by Our staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)