MADRID, May 25. (EUROPA PRESS) –
The Taiwanese Ministry of Defense announced this Saturday morning the detection of more than 60 Chinese fighter jets and nearly thirty warships around the island after two days of military maneuvers by the Chinese Army in response to statements from the newly elected Taiwanese president, William Lei, who urged Beijing to “face the existence” of the territory as a completely independent entity.
“As of 06:00 today, 62 planes and 27 ships operating around Taiwan have been detected,” the Ministry of Defense explained in a publication on the X social network.
Likewise, it has indicated that at least 47 of the planes have crossed the median line of the Taiwan Strait and have entered the island’s air defense identification zone from the southwest, southeast and east.
However, the Ministry has indicated in the same communication that the Taiwanese Armed Forces “have controlled the situation and have responded accordingly.”
From Beijing, the Chinese authorities have reiterated on numerous occasions that Taiwan’s independence will not be tolerated and that they will not rule out the use of force to prevent secession. Ties between China and the island of Taiwan, which it considers another province under its sovereignty, were severed in 1949, after the forces of the nationalist Kuomintang party suffered defeat in the civil war against the Communist Party and moved to the archipelago. Relations were reestablished only at a business and informal level in the late 1980s.
More recently, tensions around Taiwan worsened starting in 2023, following the visit of the now former Speaker of the US House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi, which was followed by a visit to Washington by a Taiwanese delegation.
