China makes record incursions into Taiwan after US-Japan naval drill in Philippine sea

As the United States Navy bolstered deterrence against China by holding a joint maritime drill with the Japanese Naval forces in the Philippine Sea, People’s Republic of China on Monday dispatched record 39 warplanes into Taiwan's air defense identification zone (ADIZ), largest seen in the new year yet. People's Liberation Army aircrafts encroached the Taiwanese airspace as the United States Navy’s two aircraft carriers, two US amphibious assault ships, and a Japanese helicopter destroyer conducted military operations in the hotly contested South China sea.

US Navy stressed in a statement that the warships were "conducting training to preserve and protect a free and open Indo-Pacific region."

The Philippine Sea is located in the Pacific Ocean towards the east of Taiwan. It is the situation at a key strategic position nestled between the self-administered island and the US territories of Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands. Taiwan defense ministry on Jan. 24 informed that the Chinese Air Force flew the fighter jets northeast of the Pratas island that falls in the north of the South China Sea but is administered as part of Cijin District, Kaohsiung, Taiwan. 

The Islands have been a flashpoint between China and the West and endangers the security of the Taiwan Strait. “If China controlled the Pratas Islands, the islands could function as a gatekeeper to monitor the US and other countries’ ships and aircraft entering the South China Sea from the Pacific Ocean,” The Diplomat analysis explained. 

As the Chinese fighter jets encroached the Taiwanese territory, the latter sent the combat aircraft to wade PLA off and intercept the planes’ route into Taiwan’s sovereign air corridor. But Chinese forces, provoked at the latest US-led maritime exercises in the South China sea, heeded little warning but no shots were fired. 

Why are tensions high between Beijing and Taipei?

The Chinese military claims that it carries out "naval and air force combat readiness patrol in the direction of the Taiwan Strait,” but Taiwan has labelled such sorties as a “violation of its territorial sovereignty and national security.” "The army will continue to be on high alert and take all necessary measures to counter, at any time, any interference by external forces and any conspiracy by separatists aiming at the so-called 'Taiwan independence,’” a spokesperson for the Eastern Theatre Command of the People's Liberation Army had earlier told the state-affiliated media. 

A US Congressional delegation had also visited Taipei twice to pledge support for Taiwanese lawmakers, a move that angered Beijing. "Taiwan will continue to step up cooperation with the United States in order to uphold our shared values of freedom and democracy, and to ensure peace and stability in the region,” Taiwan's President Tsai Ing-wen told the conference.