We will retaliate against an attack: Taiwan
Increasing Chinese fighter jet operations around Taiwan seen as ‘high frequency harassment’.
Taiwan has warned China that it will respond in kind if fired upon after Chinese fighter jets escalated operations around the island, flying repeatedly across the midpoint of the strait that separates it from the mainland.
Beijing regards Taiwan as a renegade province and has vowed to reunify it by force if necessary.
Tensions between the two have risen rapidly, particularly after Keith Krach, the US undersecretary of state, paid an official visit to Taipei last week as Washington pushed $AU9.7 billion of arms sales including cruise missiles, mines and drones to the island. After the forays by Chinese jets, Taiwan’s defence ministry said it had clearly defined procedures to deal with the “high frequency of harassment and threats from the enemy’s warships and aircraft” and added that although its soldiers would not fire the first shot they were authorised to fire back if Chinese forces did so.
The defence ministry also sought to assure the public that it had the armaments to defend the island.
“The military regularly replenishes its precision missiles in accordance to military restructuring plans,” it said. “The military’s stockpile of precision missiles is sufficient for defensive needs at the present stage.”
Taiwan said that Chinese aircraft, including twelve J-16 fighters, two J-10 fighters, two J-11 fighters and two H-6 bombers, had crossed the midline of the strait, unofficially regarded as a boundary, and entered Taiwan’s southwest air defence identification zone on Saturday. The island’s forces scrambled fighters and deployed an air defence missile system to monitor the activities, the ministry said.
In a tweet it added that it “strongly condemns and urges [China] to practise self-restraint and don’t be a troublemaker in the #indopacific region”.
The Chinese air force released a propaganda video on Monday featuring its H-6 bomber launching an attack on an island base that strongly resembled US facilities in Diego Garcia and Guam, although it appeared to have borrowed clips from three Hollywood films, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, The Rock and Hurt Locker.
THE TIMES
More Coverage
Lies and conspiracy theories seducing our schoolkids
Teachers have told a landmark survey that they feel powerless to combat the spread of misinformation from social media, even when children know it’s untrue.
Island’s ice melting at a cracking pace
Hungry polar bears in Greenland have been known to wander into town from the melting sea ice in search of food – one was shot and turned into polar bear soup.