Taipei, Aug 28 (EFE).- A total of 30 Chinese army aircraft operated near Taiwan in the last 24 hours, amid the visit to China by White House National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan, Taiwan’s defense ministry reported Wednesday.
In its latest daily report, the ministry said 27 Chinese aircraft crossed the Taiwan Strait dividing line – an unofficial border that had been respected by Taipei and Beijing for decades – and entered Taiwan’s self-proclaimed Air Defense Identification Zone between 6am local time on Tuesday (22:00 GMT Monday) and 6am on Wednesday (22:00 GMT Tuesday.)
According to the ministry, several of those planes passed just 92 kilometers from Cape Eluanbi, at the southern tip of the island, between 7:33am Tuesday and 5:33 a.m. Wednesday.
“The armed forces of (Taiwan) have monitored the situation and have used fighter aircraft, naval vessels and coastal missile systems in response to the detected activities,” the official text said.
These movements took place during Sullivan’s first day in China, where he said he was concerned about the “increasing military, diplomatic and economic pressure” from Beijing on Taipei.
Sullivan met on Tuesday in Beijing with the top Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi, who said the governments of the US and China still have the task of “fulfilling the consensus” reached between the heads of state of their respective countries.
Chinese President Xi Jinping and his US counterpart Joe Biden met in San Francisco in November, showing a certain rapprochement in a meeting aimed at stabilizing the tumultuous bilateral relationship. In it, they reached agreements to combat fentanyl trafficking and reopen military communication channels.
Tension between the two powers on Taiwan, an island governed autonomously since 1949 and which China claims as part of its territory, was again evident at that meeting. EFE
jacb/lds
