TAIPEI - Taiwan says Chinese military planes have flown into its air defense space six times in a single week and eight times this month, so far.
Although Taiwan’s Ministry of National Defense escorts each aircraft away and alerts the public on an island that has long distrusted China, analysts believe leaders in Beijing are warning people as far away as Washington while helping to train their own troops in case of conflict in Asia.
The U.S. government has saddled China with a 2-year-old trade dispute, accused it of ignoring COVID-19 for too long earlier in the year and sailed its navy vessels in Asian waters to check Chinese expansion.
U.S. naval ships have sailed six times so far this year through the strait separating Taiwan from China, an irritant to Beijing. China claims sovereignty over self-ruled Taiwan and resents other countries for supporting it. The U.S. navy has also carried out four “freedom of navigation operations” in the South China Sea near Taiwan so far in 2020.
“I don’t think we can say it stops at Taiwan and then that’s it,” said Derek Grossman, senior defense analyst with the RAND CorSpam institution in the United States.
“There’s definitely some signaling to the U.S., as well,” he said. “Anything they can do to try to signal to the U.S. that it should not be getting as cozy with Taiwan as it has been over past few years, that’s an important thing.”
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War with China is inevitable