Things Are Heating Up In The Taiwan Strait

Chinese military aircraft entered air defense zones on two sides of Taiwan while a collection of Chinese naval and government vessels operated around the island, Taiwan’s military said Monday.

Taiwan detected four People’s Liberation Army aircraft, six People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) vessels and two other Chinese “official ships” operating around the island throughout Sunday and Monday, according to Taiwan’s Ministry of National Defense. Two of the four Chinese aircraft entered Taiwan’s southwestern and eastern Air Defense Identification Zones (ADIZ), according to the ministry.

The latest Chinese military activity precedes Chinese President Xi Jinping’s visit to Washington for a high-stakes meeting with President Donald Trump on Sept. 24. Trump announced the date in July, while Beijing has yet to formally confirm the visit, Reuters reported.

Beijing considers Taiwan part of China and has made eventual “reunification” a core national objective, while Taiwan has governed itself separately since 1949. Chinese leaders have not renounced the use of force to bring the island under Beijing’s control, according to China’s State Council Taiwan Affairs Office.

“China is demonstrating an ever-improving military capacity to take Taiwan by force,” Patrick Cronin, chair for Asia-Pacific Security at the Hudson Institute, told the Daily Caller News Foundation. “By increasingly encircling Taiwan with military and nominally civilian ships and aircraft, the PLA is rehearsing the ability to transition rapidly from peacetime coercion or a military exercise to a blockade or full-scale invasion.”

Taiwan, meanwhile, is preparing to spend a record-setting NT$1 trillion (New Taiwanese Dollars), roughly $31 billion, on defense in 2027 for the first time as Taipei accelerates its military buildup in response to pressure from Beijing, President Lai Ching-te said earlier this month, according to Reuters.

Taiwanese forces monitored the Chinese activity and responded with combat air patrol aircraft, naval vessels and coastal missile systems, according to the Republic of China’s Ministry of National Defense.

The Republic of China’s Ministry of National Defense, U.S. Indo-Pacific Command and the Chinese Ministry of National Defense did not respond to a request for comment.

“This is in line with China’s coercive approach to Taiwan, which is itself troubling,” Eric Heginbotham, a principal research scientist at Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Security Studies Program and co-director of its Wargaming Lab, told the DCNF. “But these recent developments are not a major departure or particularly alarming in themselves. This has become relatively routine. To provide but one example, during Joint Sword-2024A, 62 aircraft and dozens of warships entered Taiwan’s ADIZ.”