Taiwan’s air defense zone was breached at an unprecedented rate by Chinese warplanes last year, with squadrons of bombers and spy planes plying routes previously off limits to the Chinese military.
Beijing regards Taiwan as a breakaway province and maintains that the self-ruling democracy must come under its rule, either through peaceful reunification or military capture.
So “routine” have incursions from People’s Liberation Army plans become that the island’s defense ministry has even decided to stop disseminating news of them, either via its website or in press conferences. When PLA warplanes first began traversing Taiwanese airspace a few years ago, the news raised significant public outcry.
In one mission, in mid December, a battalion of H-6K strategic bombers, Su-30 and J-11 interdiction fighters, in addition to other reconnaissance planes and tanker aircraft, not only circled Taiwan but also skimmed Japan’s air defense zone above the Sea of Japan. Taiwan’s Central Mountain Range was seen in the background of photos dispatched by the PLA Air Force about its pilots’ “righteous” patrol of “China’s own soil and air.”
Taipei-based military monthly Defense International notes in a feature that PLA warplanes penetrating the region is an attritional tactic aimed at depleting the morale and resources of the Taiwanese Air Force, as the latter will have to scramble its own jets, such as its F-16 and indigenous F-CK-1 Ching-kuo fighters, to monitor and intercept the enemy.
The magazine states that Taiwan is already overstretched in terms of maintaining a combat-ready army as it pursues a “containment” policy towards China with a “ration”-like arms supply from the United States.
Michael S. Chase, a senior political scientist at the US think tank RAND Corp. told Guangzhou-based Southern Weekly that PLA warplanes’ high-profile hops from its bases in central China to the high seas in western Pacific are intended to pry out and gauge the deployment, interception and command and control strengths and capabilities of not only the Taiwanese military but also the armed forces of Japan and South Korea.
I"ve got an idea! Every time a PRC plane crosses over into Taiwan teritory bombard them with multiple green lazers from the ground in Taiwan. It is such a big annoyance. It is not violent, but sends the message your planes here are not wanted. The minastry could set up several stations accross the island and as PRC planes fly by, military or comercial airlines, Taiwan can still send the message that their planes are unwanted.
USA already do so.
Imagine if there were US planes, coming daily into Chinese held air space.
There would be an outcry.
The Chinese Communist regime, does indeed want Taiwan to join China, as a nation state.
However, historical reasons prevent this.
Bullying, blustering and belligerence, will only achieve international alarm, and a fierce resistance from Taiwan.
The Communist regime of China, needs to carefully consider, the urgent needs of the great Chinese peoples’ infrastructural and economic system, before casting its greedy eyes, over water and over land, to other nation states.
Tiananmen square is a constant reminder to the entire world, of Chinese Communist Party rule, being a crystallisation of Chairman Mao’s infamous statement, ‘Power comes from the barrel of a gun’.
Show the world you can leave that behind.