The Chinese fleet of warplanes marked a forceful display just as Taiwan prepares to conduct an anti-invasion military exercise.
China sent dozens of warplanes towards Taiwan, said the island's defense ministry on Saturday.
The Chinese military planes entered Taiwan's air defense identification zone days before Taiwan is set to conduct anti-invasion military exercises.
The Chinese People's Liberation Army (PLA) sent a forceful flight of 37 aircrafts and seven navy vessels between Friday and Saturday, the Taiwanese defense ministry said in a statement.
Among these were J-10 and J-16 fighter jets as well as H-6 bombers.
The Taiwan defense ministry detected that 22 of these warplanes had entered the island's air defense identification zone and had crossed the midline of the Taiwan Strait which is an unofficial boundary between China and Taiwan.
Taiwan is due to hold the annual Han Kaung exercise next week, during which the country will conduct military exercises aimed at defending itself against a possible invasion.
A deepening divide
Deep divisions between China and Taiwan date back to the civil war in 1949 which ended with the ruling Communist Party taking control of the mainland.
Beijing regards Taiwan as part of mainland territory.
In recent years, China has shown its displeasure at several political activities in Taiwan by sending military planes towards the island.
Beijing stepped up its efforts to isolate Taiwan after former US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi visited Taiwan in August 2022.
In April, in response to a meeting between Taiwan's President Tsai Ing-wen and US House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, the PLA held large-scale military drills around the island's sea and air.
This is typical behavior for China to show its displeasure when Taiwan gets involved in non-China, independence-affirming things. Its so routine, that at this point it'd be more significant if they DIDNT provide some type of military response.
If the US Government were to build on Taiwan, would any Chinese invasion/attack constitute an attack on the US? If so, Iād think thatās a war that nobody wants. If so, if so, then the US should definitely build lots of little closet sized buildings around the country to prevent it
If China invaded Taiwan, one of the major impacts would be that Apple would cease to exist. The impacts probably cannot be overstated as it would be a 3 trillion dollar economic hit to the United States economy, along with crippling companies like Samsung. TSMC is one of the top five most critical technology companies in existence right now.
It would be like if Canada were to take out Intel.
While China holds a legally indefensible position that the straight is it's territorial waters, so is Taiwan's ADIZ or any claim that Chinese (or Taiwanese if they wished) planes cannot cross the midway point.
The straight is 97 nmi wide, territorial waters cannot extend beyond 12, so there's plenty of international waters (and thus airspace) for anybody to fly on.