Taiwan President Tsai thanks fighter pilots as China’s military drills let up

TAIPEI – Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen on Friday thanked fighter pilots who scrambled against China’s air force during its drills around the island and pledged to keep strengthening the armed forces, as Beijing’s military activities around the island ebbed.

China began the exercises last Saturday

after Ms Tsai returned from Los Angeles where she met United States House of Representatives Speaker Kevin McCarthy, infuriating Beijing.

China views democratically governed Taiwan as its own territory, claims which the government in Taipei strongly reject.

In the central Taiwanese city of Taichung, Ms Tsai met fighter pilots who are often stationed at the front-line airbase of Magong in the Taiwan Strait, thanking them for their hard work and for sticking to their posts around the clock. 

“I want to tell everyone: As long as we are united, we can reassure the country’s people and let the world see our determination to protect the nation,” she said in a video clip provided by the presidential office. 

Ms Tsai noted that the Taiwan-made Ching-kuo Indigenous Defence Fighters (IDF), which entered service in 1997, had been upgraded to more advanced versions. 

“In the future, we will continue to upgrade software and hardware facilities and strengthen personnel training,” she said.

Ms Tsai’s office showed images of her talking to pilots dressed in flight uniforms and being given a briefing in front of an IDF parked in a hangar. 

Visiting an army base in Taichung later on Friday, Ms Tsai reiterated that Taiwan would neither “escalate conflict nor provoke disputes” but would protect its sovereignty, democracy and freedom, her office said. 

China’s three days of drills formally ended on Monday, but Taiwan has reported continued activity on a reduced scale.

On Friday afternoon, the Defence Ministry said that as at 2pm, two Chinese drones had been seen in the Taiwan Strait area carrying out surveillance, and that four Chinese navy ships and six military aircraft were operating around Taiwan. It did not give exact locations. But in an accompanying map of China’s activities, it did not show any Chinese warplanes crossing the Taiwan Strait’s median line, which normally serves as an unofficial barrier between the two.

China says it does not recognise the median line and has flown fighter jets regularly across it since August.

Taiwan’s government says that although it wants peace and to hold talks with China, it will not bow to pressure, and that Taiwan has a right to engage with the world.

A poll published on Friday by the Taiwanese Public Opinion Foundation, which bills itself as non-partisan, found that 61 per cent of respondents approved of the Tsai-McCarthy meeting. REUTERS