TAIPEI: Taiwan accused Beijing of bullying and damaging regional peace on Saturday after Chinese fighter jets and bombers made their largest-ever incursion into the island’s air defence zone.

Beijing marked its National Day on Friday with its biggest aerial show of force against Taiwan, buzzing the self-ruled democratic island with 38 warplanes, including nuclear-capable H-6 bombers.

That was followed by a new record incursion on Saturday by 39 planes, said Taiwan’s defence ministry.

Democratic Taiwan’s 23 million people live under the constant threat of invasion by China, which views the island as its territory and has vowed to one day seize it, by force if necessary. Under President Xi Jinping, Chinese warplanes are crossing into Taiwan’s air defence identification zone (ADIZ) on a near daily basis. But Friday’s incursion sparked a particularly sharp rebuke from Taipei.

“China has been bellicose and damaging regional peace while engaging in many bullying acts,” Premier Su Tseng-chang told reporters on Saturday.

“It’s evident that the world, the international community, rejects such behaviours by China more and more.” Taiwan’s defence ministry said it scrambled its aircraft to broadcast warnings after 22 fighters, two bombers and one anti-submarine aircraft entered the island’s southwest ADIZ on Friday.

A second batch of 13 jets then crossed into Taiwan’s ADIZ later on Friday, in a rare night incursion, bringing the total to 38.

The ADIZ is not the same as Taiwan’s territorial airspace but includes a far greater area that overlaps with part of China’s own air defence identification zone and even includes some of mainland China. Mass incursions used to be rare.

But in the last two years Beijing has begun sending large sorties into Taiwan’s ADIZ to signal dissatisfaction at key moments — and to keep Taipei’s ageing fighter fleet regularly stressed.

Last week 24 Chinese warplanes flew into the area after Taiwan applied to join a major trans-Pacific trade pact. Friday’s show of force came the same week Beijing accused Britain of “evil attentions” after it sent a frigate to sail through the Taiwan Strait.

China claims the strait as its own waterway, along with most of the disputed South China Sea. Most other nations view them as international waters open to all.

Beijing has ramped up pressure on Taipei since the 2016 election of President Tsai Ing-wen, who has said she views the island as “already independent” and not part of a “one China”.

Last year, Chinese military jets made a record 380 incursions into Taiwan’s defence zone, and the number of breaches for the first nine months of this year has already exceeded 500.

The previous single-day record was on June 15 when 28 jets breached Taiwan’s ADIZ. Xi has described Taiwan becoming part of the mainland as “inevitable”.

US military officials have begun to talk openly about fears that China could consider the previously unthinkable and invade.

Protection of Taiwan has become a rare bipartisan issue in Washington and a growing number of Western nations have begun joining the United States in “freedom of navigation” exercises to push back on China’s claims to the South China Sea and Taiwan Strait. Britain sent a warship through the Taiwan Strait on Monday for the first time since 2008.

Published in Dawn, October 3rd, 2021