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Taiwan reports second large-scale China air force incursion this week (www.reuters.com)

submitted 11 months ago by RandAlThor@lemmy.ca to c/worldnews@lemmy.ml

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[-] GarbageShoot@hexbear.net 168 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

Ten Chinese air force aircraft entered Taiwan's air defence zone . . . Of those aircraft, the ministry said 10 had either crossed the median line of the Taiwan Strait, which previously served as an unofficial barrier between the two sides, or entered the southwestern part of Taiwan's air defence identification zone, or ADIZ.

For those unfamiliar with the Air Defense Identification Zone:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_Defense_Identification_Zone_(Taiwan)

Not only does it include a lot of water that isn't part of the Strait, right off of China's coast, it also includes a portion of Mainland China a few times larger than Taiwan itself.

People like to talk like China is flying jets over Taipei City, but you can fly a plane from one city in Mainland China to another, only passing over land, and be in this zone. Mind you, I don't think Taiwan having this zone is bad -- countries generally should be aware of air traffic nearby -- but this is part of a long history of alarmist headlines by western media regarding what is often very uninteresting air traffic in the PRC.

[-] RandAlThor@lemmy.ca 0 points 11 months ago

So Chinese bots are on lemmy too now. You obviously didn't read the article - "Of those aircraft, the ministry said 10 had either crossed the median line of the Taiwan Strait, which previously served as an unofficial barrier between the two sides, or entered the southwestern part of Taiwan's air defence identification zone, or ADIZ."

In international relations, militaries have defined and at times unspoken rules of engagement. This was NOT routine flight over mainland China that you are making out to be, but was a clear breach of said protocols. Thus Taiwan sent its fighter jets to observe the Chinese military aircraft.