Taiwan Detects Chinese Warplanes and Warships on Pointed Maneuvers

Taiwan reported the largest Chinese military air and sea maneuvers of the month on Tuesday, when it said 25 warplanes and six warships were detected in its vicinity.

At least 13 of the People's Liberation Army aircraft—unspecified numbers of fighter jets, support planes and unmanned aerial vehicles—crossed the center line of the Taiwan Strait and entered the island's air defense identification zone (ADIZ) in the 24 hours to 6 a.m. local time on February 6, Taiwan's Defense Ministry said in a daily report.

An ADIZ—also deployed by neighboring China, South Korea, Japan and the Philippines—is a self-declared buffer zone in international airspace used to identify foreign military and civilian aircraft. This week's PLA air incursions were the first to reach double figures in February, after having done so on three occasions last month.

Taiwan said its forces "monitored the situation and employed appropriate forces to respond," according to a public statement. Because of the slower movements of PLA naval vessels in its surrounding waters, Taiwan typically does not disclose their relative positions.

China's Defense Ministry could not be reached for comment.

Taipei's latest report for Wednesday showed no military activity inside its ADIZ, but noted the continued presence of suspected Chinese weather balloons, some of which have overflown its territorial airspace. An official in Beijing said last week that the devices served meteorological purposes and were "nothing new."

China claims Taiwan as its own despite Taipei's repeated rejections. PLA activity around the island surged in the fall of 2020 after the United States—Taiwan's strongest international backer—dispatched Cabinet officials to Taipei for the first time in over four decades.

Beijing's military activity, which Washington says is destabilizing cross-strait peace and stability, picked up in the summer of 2022 after Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) became the first serving House speaker to set foot on the island in a quarter century, a move that embarrassed the Chinese leadership's claims of sovereignty over Taiwan's 23.4 million people.

Taipei says the PLA's near-daily flights into its ADIZ are a form of intimidation. Coupled with economic incentives for Taiwan's citizens and economic coercion against its businesses, the military moves are part of Beijing's multi-pronged strategy to bend the island's government and population to its will.

The Chinese military, analysts say, also uses incursions into Taiwan's ADIZ to train its pilots, who in turn have become increasingly familiar with potentially high-risk operations in hostile airspace.

Taiwan detected 71 Chinese military sorties on 23 days in its air defense zone in January, according to an online database maintained by U.S.-based analysts Gerald C. Brown, Benjamin Lewis and Alex Kung.

The figure was lower than December's 80 sorties on 20 days, but still largely in keeping with the high intensity of such sorties in the past three and a half years.

Subject matter experts, who had noticed a slight drop-off early in the month, predicted an uptick after elections on January 13 saw the Taiwanese public vote the ruling Democratic Progressive Party back into power for a third consecutive four-year term.