TAIPEI, Taiwan — China sent several warplanes on a sortie over the disputed waters of the Taiwan Strait Thursday, the island’s defense ministry said, in the latest escalation of its military buildup in the region.
Taiwan scrambled three F-16 fighters in response to the incursion by Chinese Su-35 fighters about five miles offshore, the ministry said. Taiwan also scrambled F-16Js and fighter jets from its mainland military.
The Chinese planes, flying off of their country’s southeast coast, flew in an arc that included East China Sea and the sea between Taiwan and the Philippines, the ministry said.
It was the latest skirmish in one of the most heated military confrontations in recent years between Beijing and Taipei, the island that China claims as its own.
With China asserting itself as the sole authority in the South China Sea, where the waters and islands of the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei and Singapore are disputed, China has become increasingly assertive about its military posture in the region, staging show-of-force exercises including fighter flights that take its combat power close to foreign shores.
China insists it has the right to act in self-defense over the Taiwan Strait, a narrow body of water that extends south from Taiwan toward Japan and the South China Sea.
On Tuesday, Chinese President Xi Jinping told leaders of three island nations that Beijing would safeguard its “core” interests, meaning his country’s disputed islands, its security with its allies and the sovereignty of Taiwan.
By sending its fighter jets and warplanes into the Taiwan Strait Thursday, the Chinese military insisted again that China has the right to protect its national sovereignty and security.
China is the biggest military spender in the world and has deployed nuclear weapons on some of its islands. It also uses the growing military buildup in the region, including in the South China Sea, to flex its muscles and show its willingness to use force to drive Taiwan from the Taiwanese capital of Taipei.
Taiwan has close relations with most of its diplomatic allies in Asia, including Singapore, which sent three planes and one helicopter Thursday that also followed the Chinese jets’ flight south, sending a message of defiance to Beijing, the ministry said.