Test flights

The Chinese military flew 38 aircraft into Taiwan’s air-defense identification zone on October 1, the most planes that China had ever sent into it. The following day, 39 Chinese warplanes entered, and then Beijing topped that with 56 military planes on October 4. During these flights, nuclear-capable bombers were surrounded by fighter jets, in a typical attack formation. The identification zone is outside Taiwan’s international airspace, but Taiwan’s foreign minister said he was concerned that China was going to launch a war. In the United States, the White House and the State Department urged the People’s Republic to end its pressure on Taiwan, calling the flights “destabilizing.” China blamed the U.S. for endangering regional peace by selling arms to Taipei and regularly sailing warships through the Taiwan Strait. What’s going on?

Bonnie Glaser is the director of the Asia Program at the German Marshall Fund of the United States. Glaser says China isn’t going to attack Taiwan imminently. Chinese President Xi Jinping is using the flights partly to please his military and the Chinese people. Beijing often conducts these sorties to send signals abroad, Glaser says, so these flights might also show ongoing displeasure with U.S. President Joe Biden’s policies. Biden has made Taiwan’s independence a more prominent part of U.S. foreign policy by bringing in allies to confirm Washington’s support for the island. Countries in the Asia-Pacific region have a lot at stake in the dynamic between China and Taiwan, in Glaser’s view—seeing Taiwan as a barometer of both China’s aggressiveness in the region and the United States’ reliability as a protector …

Michael Bluhm: What are we seeing in these Chinese military flights near Taiwan?

Bonnie Glaser: There are only a few dozen countries in the world that have air-defense identification zones (ADIZ). This isn’t territorial airspace. These flights by China have never flown into Taiwan’s territorial airspace, which extends 12 nautical miles from the coastline of Taiwan. They’ve never overflown Taiwan proper.