Taiwan has fired warning shots with live ammunition at a Chinese civilian drone flying over Taiwan's Kinmen Islands for the first time.

A total of ten civilian drones were sighted over the islands, the Taiwanese military said on Tuesday evening.

Nine of them were driven away with signal rockets.

Warning shots were fired at a tenth after the flying object continued to orbit the island of Erdan, which belongs to the Kinmen group, despite other warning signals.

The drone then flew towards the nearby Chinese coastal city of Xiamen, the statement said.

Friederike Böge

Political correspondent for China, North Korea and Mongolia.

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On Sunday, the Kinmen local command announced for the first time that it would shoot down Chinese drones if they did not respond to multi-stage warnings.

A spokesman for the Defense Ministry in Taipei said Wednesday that Taiwan will "exercise its right to self-defense in accordance with operational orders," including in the case of civilian drones.

The respective procedure will be decided on the basis of the threat situation.

A few hours before the warning shots, President Tsai Ing-wen had accused China of “grey zone warfare” with regard to the drone activities.

This refers to the use of non-military means for military purposes.

China also uses such tools at sea, for example by using dredgers to dig for sand in waters claimed by Taiwan, regularly cutting undersea cables in the process.

The use of the civilian, presumably commercially available, drones is believed to serve the purpose of undermining the morale of the Taiwanese armed forces and the population.

A number of videos and aerial photos of Kinmen and other Taiwanese islands near the Chinese coast, which were taken with the help of such drones, have been circulating on the Internet in recent days.

Several shots show Taiwanese soldiers

sometimes up close.

A video showing soldiers throwing stones at the flying object caused a stir.

This gave the public the impression of being defenseless and was perceived as humiliating by the armed forces.

Department of Defense wants to show determination

The footage increases pressure on the Taiwanese government to show more determination, but presents it with a dilemma: shooting down a civilian drone could provide China with an excuse to ramp up military activity around Taiwan.

President Tsai said during a troop visit to the Penghu archipelago on Tuesday: "The more the enemy provokes, the more prudent we have to be." Taiwan will "exercise self-restraint, but that doesn't mean we don't do anything."

She ordered "necessary and strong countermeasures," she said.

The Taiwanese Ministry of Defense has announced that a newly developed anti-drone system will be stationed on Kinmen next year.

Critics expressed incomprehension why the military does not force the civilian drones to land with jammers,

as used by the Taiwanese police.

This could entail complicated negotiations about a return of the drone.

A spokesman for the Chinese Foreign Ministry on Monday reacted contemptuously to Taiwanese complaints about the drone flights.

"Chinese drones flying over Chinese territory, what's surprising about that?" said Zhao Lijian.

The Taiwanese Ministry of Defense, meanwhile, tried to show determination.

A spokesman said the country would react "without exception" with "resistance" to any intrusion of a military aircraft or warship into the twelve-mile zone of Taiwan and exercise its "right to self-defense".

So far, China has avoided invading the airspace and territorial waters claimed by Taiwan.

On Wednesday, the Taiwanese Ministry of Defense gave a detailed analysis of the situation to foreign journalists.

Among other things, a spokesman expressed the expectation that China would declare the Taiwan Strait as domestic waters in the future and would ban foreign military ships from passing through.

This will become a "major source of instability."

Two American warships sailed through the Taiwan Strait on Sunday.

By its standards, China reacted cautiously.