Taiwan’s defense ministry said three Chinese ships, including the aircraft carrier Shandong, sailed through the Taiwan Strait on May 27. “A three-ship PLA [People’s Liberation Army] flotilla, led by the aircraft carrier Shandong, passed through the Taiwan Strait around noon today,” the ministry said in a statement.
The ships headed “west of the median line towards the north”, he said, referring to this invisible border drawn unilaterally by the United States during the Cold War, which Beijing refuses to recognize . Taiwan’s defense ministry added that eight Chinese fighter jets had crossed the center line of the strait in the past 24 hours, an operation that has become regular since August.
Taiwan military ‘responded appropriately’
Taiwan’s armed forces “monitored the situation and tasked [civilian air patrol] aircraft, navy ships and land-based missile systems to respond to these activities,” the island’s ministry said. Before confirming that the army had since “responded appropriately”. On Saturday, 33 warplanes and 10 ships were “detected at 6 a.m.,” according to the defense ministry. The day before, 11 ships were near Taiwanese waters.
China’s defense ministry did not respond to a request for comment, and the country’s armed forces made no mention of the trip on their official social media.
According to Steve Tsang, director of the SOAS China Institute at the University of London, the passage of the aircraft carrier Shandong through the Taiwan Strait is “very unusual”. “But the Chinese have been trying to demonstrate their military power around Taiwan in the last six months or in the last year,” he told Agence France-Presse. Thus, Shandong’s appearance in the strait fits into this “general context”, according to Mr. Tsang.
The last time Taiwan officials reported the Chinese aircraft carrier’s presence in the Taiwan Strait was in March 2022. It was deployed there before a phone call between Chinese President Xi Jinping and his US counterpart Joe Biden. .
China regards Taiwan as a province that it has yet to reunify with the rest of its territory since the end of the Chinese Civil War in 1949. Relations between Beijing and Taipei, at their worst since the arrival in power of Xi Jinping more than a decade ago, have further deteriorated in recent years and China has stepped up military incursions around the island.
