Taiwan said Thursday it detected 45 Chinese aircraft near the self-ruled island, the highest number this year and a tally that comes a day after Taipei condemned China’s “live-fire” drills off the south.
China insists democratic Taiwan is part of its territory and has threatened to use force to bring the island under its control.
Beijing has increased the deployment of fighter jets and naval vessels around Taiwan in recent years to press its claim of sovereignty, which Taipei rejects.
In the 24 hours to 6:00 am (2200 GMT on Wednesday), 45 Chinese aircraft and 14 warships were spotted near Taiwan, Taipei’s defence ministry said in a statement.
It was the highest number of Chinese aircraft detected this year and the most since December 11, an AFP tally of the ministry’s daily figures shows.
Taiwan said Wednesday that China staged a combat drill with aircraft and warships and announced “live-fire exercises” in an area about 40 nautical miles (74 kilometres) off the island’s south, which Taipei condemned as dangerous and a violation of “international norms”.
Taiwan’s military responded by sending forces to “monitor, alert and respond appropriately”, the ministry said.
Beijing’s foreign ministry declined to comment on Wednesday.
Taiwan’s Presidential Office on Thursday issued a “severe condemnation” of China’s actions, which it called a “blatant provocation”.
Its foreign ministry urged the international community “to continue to pay attention to the security of the Taiwan Strait and the region”.
On Tuesday, Taiwan seized a Chinese-crewed cargo ship suspected of severing a subsea telecoms cable serving Taiwan’s Penghu island group.
See also: Taiwan’s coast guard detains Chinese-crewed ship after subsea cable cut
There is growing concern in Taiwan over the security of its cables after a Chinese-owned cargo ship was suspected of cutting one northeast of the island this year.
Taiwan fears China could sever its communication links as part of an attempt to seize the island or to blockade it.
China’s state news agency Xinhua on Wednesday quoted senior Communist Party official Wang Huning as saying China must “firmly support the patriotic unification forces on the island… and shape the inevitable unification of the motherland”.
Flashpoint
Taiwan is a potential flashpoint for a war between China and the United States, which is the island’s most important backer and biggest arms supplier.
While the United States is legally bound to provide arms to Taiwan — which Beijing opposes — Washington has long maintained “strategic ambiguity” when it comes to whether it would deploy its military to defend it from a Chinese attack.
Despite longstanding strong bipartisan support in the US Congress for Taiwan, there are fears that US President Donald Trump might not consider the island worth defending if China attacked.
Asked Wednesday if he would stop China taking control of Taiwan by force, Trump said “I never comment on that”.
Taiwan President Lai Ching-te has already vowed to boost investment in the United States to reduce the trade imbalance and spend more on the island’s military, while his government is also considering increasing US natural gas imports.
The dispute between China and Taiwan dates back to 1949 when Chiang Kai-shek’s Kuomintang nationalist forces fled to Taiwan after losing the Chinese civil war with Mao Zedong’s communist fighters.
Communist China has never ruled Taiwan, where indigenous tribes have lived for thousands of years. The island was partly or totally ruled at various times by the Dutch, Spanish, China’s Qing dynasty and Japan.
