China’s military flew 38 fighter jets and other warplanes near Taiwan, the Taiwanese defence ministry said on Friday, in the largest such flight display since the large military exercise in which it simulated sealing off the island earlier in the month.
Naval vessels were also seen in the area as part of China’s long-running campaign of intimidation against Taiwan. Later Friday, China’s People’s Liberation Army issued a protest over the flight of a US Navy P-8A Poseidon anti-submarine patrol aircraft through the Taiwan Strait separating mainland China from the self-governing island democracy claimed by Beijing.
Calling Thursday’s flight a provocation that the US “openly hyped-up”, the PLA’s Army’s Eastern Theatre Command said it scrambled fighter jets to monitor the plane’s flight.Such acts “fully prove that the US is a disruptor of peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait and a creator of security risks in the Taiwan Strait”, the statement said.
