Chinese aircraft carrier crosses Taiwan Strait

Europe 1 with AFP 14:23 p.m., May 27, 2023

Taiwan's Defense Ministry said three Chinese ships, including the aircraft carrier Shandong, crossed the Taiwan Strait on Saturday, which has become a geopolitical powder keg in recent years. "A three-ship PLA (People's Liberation Army) flotilla, led by the aircraft carrier Shandong, crossed the Taiwan Strait around noon today," the ministry said in a statement. The ships headed "west of the median line towards the north," he added, referring to the invisible border drawn unilaterally by the United States during the Cold War, which Beijing refuses to recognize.

While the presence of Chinese warships in the Taiwan Strait is constantly monitored and announced almost daily by Taipei, that of the aircraft carrier Shandong is unusual. Taiwan's armed forces "monitored the situation and instructed (civilian air patrol) aircraft, navy ships and land-based missile systems to respond to these activities," the ministry said.

On Saturday, 33 warplanes and 10 ships were "detected at 6 a.m.," according to the island's Defense Ministry. The day before, 11 vessels were in the vicinity of Taiwanese waters. Since the end of the Chinese Civil War in 1949, China has regarded Taiwan as a province it has not yet managed to reunify with the rest of its territory.

Show of force

According to Steve Tsang, director of the SOAS China Institute at the University of London, the passage of the aircraft carrier Shandong through the Taiwan Strait is "very unusual". "But the Chinese have tried to demonstrate their military might around Taiwan in the last six months or in the last year," he told AFP. Thus, the appearance of Shandong in the strait is part of this "general context", according to Steve Tsang.

The last time Taiwanese authorities reported the presence of the Chinese aircraft carrier in the Taiwan Strait was in March 2022. It had been deployed there ahead of a telephone conversation between Chinese President Xi Jinping and his American counterpart, Joe Biden. Relations between Beijing and Taipei, at their lowest since Xi Jinping came to power more than 10 years ago, have further deteriorated in recent years and China has stepped up military incursions around the island.

>> READ ALSO - Taiwan: being an "ally" of the United States does not mean being "vassal", says Emmanuel Macron

Beijing's latest show of force comes just over a month after the end of its major military maneuvers around the island in April, which aimed to encircle Taiwan for three days. During those exercises, Beijing simulated targeted bombing of the autonomous island and an encirclement of Taiwan, whose authorities had detected 12 Chinese warships and 91 aircraft on the last day of operations.

Fighter jets were also deployed from the Chinese aircraft carrier Shandong and crossed the middle line, Taiwan's defense ministry said at the time. China's military maneuvers came days after Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen met with US House of Representatives Speaker Kevin McCarthy, to which Beijing had promised to respond.