Beijing, Apr 4 approaching the island of 20 aircraft and three ships of the People's Liberation Army of China (PLA), follows from the daily report of the Taiwanese defense department.
«From 06:00 on April 3 to 06:00 on April 4, 20 aircraft and three ships of the People's Liberation Army of China were observed around Taiwan,» the agency said on Twitter.
It is noted that one BZK-005 drone and eight aircraft crossed the so-called «median line» of the Taiwan Strait, including seven J-16 fighter jets and one Y-8 anti-submarine aircraft.
Taiwan has sent air and sea patrols to monitor the situation, and also deployed ground-based missile systems, the ministry said.
US House Speaker Kevin McCarthy will meet with Taiwanese Chief of Staff Tsai Ing-wen on Wednesday, according to media reports. Earlier, the readiness to take action in the event of a meeting between McCarthy and the head of Taiwan was announced in Beijing. Zhu Fenglian, spokeswoman for China's State Council Taiwan Affairs Office, stressed that such contact would seriously harm China's sovereignty, leading to a reaction.
The situation around Taiwan escalated significantly after a visit to the island in early August last year by then-Speaker of the US House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi. China, which considers the island one of its provinces, condemned Pelosi's visit, seeing in this move US support for Taiwanese separatism, and held large-scale military exercises.
Official relations between the central government of the People's Republic of China and its island province were interrupted in 1949 after the Kuomintang forces led by Chiang Kai-shek, defeated in a civil war with the Communist Party of China, moved to Taiwan. Business and informal contacts between the island and mainland China resumed in the late 1980s. Since the beginning of the 1990s, the parties began to contact through non-governmental organizations — the Beijing Association for the Development of Relations across the Taiwan Strait and the Taipei Foundation for Cross-Strait Exchanges.