Taiwan seeks to adapt his response to Chinese maneuvers

A Chinese drone has been shot down above the lion island, while the incursions of these aerial vehicles, apparently civil, multiply.

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For the first time, Taiwan shot down a Chinese drone on Thursday 1 September. This apparently civilian drone flew over Taiwanese airspace, near the lion island which is near Xiamen, in continental China. “The parked troops followed the procedures to warn the drone, but without success. The drone was shot in a defensive shot,” said the Taiwanese Ministry of Defense. While China undertook unprecedented military maneuvers in early August around Taiwan, this incident illustrates the persistence of tensions between the two banks of the Strait.

Chinese drone incursions in Taiwanese airspace has multiplied in recent weeks. Although the use is extremely controlled in China, the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs minimized these incursions: they do not constitute “something that deserves to do stories” since drones “flew around Chinese territory”, said , Monday, August 29, a spokesperson for this same ministry.

At the beginning of the week, a video traveling on social networks showed Taiwanese soldiers who launched stones on a drone to make it leave. These flights “reveal the weakness of the defense of the Taiwanese armed forces”, commented the Chinese nationalist global Times.

“We must be calm”

Tuesday, August 30, Taiwan president, Tsai Ing -Wen, denounced a tactic of Beijing of “Gray Zone” – between war and peace – to continue to “intimidate” Taiwan. “I mean to everyone that the more the enemy causes, the more we must be calm (…). We are not going to provoke a war and we observe restraint but that does not mean that we will not take countermeasures “Said the president, during a visit to an air force unit. On this occasion, she announced that she had asked the Ministry of Defense “to take the farms and necessary countermeasures at the appropriate time to defend the safety of our airspace”. On Wednesday, three Chinese civilian drones turned around after Taiwan launched warning shots.

If, officially, China minimizes these drone incursions, it criticizes their destruction. Jin Canrong, vice-dean of the Institute of International Relations of the University of Renmin, a regular in the Chinese media, estimated Thursday that “Taiwanese shooting is a fairly dangerous action, even if it is only Drone and that blood has not flowed, they still opened fire. It is an aggressive action and a threat in the relationship between the two banks of the strait. It is not a good thing. Is it that it can cause a conflict between the two banks of the strait? We cannot exclude it but, conflict or not, it depends on the strategic situation “.

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