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Lawrence Chung

Mainland China’s repeated military incursions into Taiwan’s air defence zone are meant to drain the island’s air force and establish the PLA as a regular presence in the area, observers said.
The incursions were also designed to ramp up pressure on the island and lower the public’s guard to a potential attack, they said.
The assessments came a day after the island’s defence minister revealed that more than 8 per cent of Taiwan’s military budget for this year had been spent on responding to the incursions.
Addressing Taiwan’s legislature on Wednesday, Defence Minister Yen Te-fa said the People’s Liberation Army had conducted 1,710 air sorties and 1,029 maritime incursions into Taiwan’s air defence identification zone (ADIZ) this year.
US warns China against attacking Taiwan, stressing American ‘ambiguity’
PLA aircraft flew 217 sorties into the southwest corner of Taiwan’s ADIZ and 49 across the median line – the unofficial line that separates the island and the mainland.
In response, Taiwan’s air force and navy mounted roughly 3,000 aircraft sorties to shadow, disperse and monitor the PLA aircraft, Yen said.
Military officials also confirmed that PLA pilots responded to two Taiwanese attempts to disperse them by shouting over radio channels that “there is no median line” and that the PLA should not be interrupted doing “routine training”.
Yen told the legislature that acts like these were deemed “provocative”.


“We have standard operating procedures in dealing with them, which include warning them off through radio, shadowing, and dispersal,” he said.
Yen said the frequent incursions of the PLA warplanes and vessels into Taiwan’s southwest ADIZ could be a sign that the PLA was preparing to set up a South China Sea air defence zone.
Taiwan’s southwest ADIZ is located near the Bashi Channel and the Philippine Sea – both gateways to the South China Sea, where Beijing has in the past year sharply increased its military presence to counter US freedom of navigation patrols.
Analysts said the PLA aimed to turn the southwest corner of Taiwan’s ADIZ into its own area for military activities.
Taiwan scrambles fighter jets after PLA spy plane enters air defence zone
“By flying into Taiwan’s southwest ADIZ, the PLA aims to regularise its practice in the area,” said Chieh Chung, a national security researcher at National Policy Foundation, an opposition Kuomintang party think tank.
He said the frequent fly-bys and military exercises were meant to further intimidate Taiwan and also allow the PLA to shift attention away from the coronavirus pandemic and economic gloom at home.
On whether the PLA really wanted to ignore the median line, Chieh said that for the moment the PLA did not intend to totally breach it because it wanted to keep the line as a means of pressure for both the United States and Taiwan.


Su Tzu-yun, an analyst at the government-funded Institute for National Defence and Security Research, said the frequent incursions were also “a kind of attrition and psychological war tactic to exhaust Taiwan’s forces and reduce the public’s alertness against a possible Chinese attack”.
According to Yen, Taiwan’s air force and the navy have spent NT$31.2 billion (US$1 billion) this year just to send warplanes to intercept the PLA planes – amounting to 8.7 per cent of the total military budget for this year.
Yen said his ministry would have to conduct periodic reviews to determine whether supplemental funding was needed.
But Su said the PLA aircraft incursions were a big burden for the mainland’s armed forces, which also had to patrol the China-India border, the South China Sea and waters near Japan.


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The PLA has mounted thousands of incursions into the island’s defence zone this year
Taiwan’s military has used more than 8 per cent of its budget responding to the missions, the defence minister says



The PLA has mounted thousands of incursions into the island’s defence zone this year, taking a toll on Taiwan’s resources.


Taiwan

China's military weapons