Taiwan hails its ‘determined’ fighter pilots as Chinese military activity around island dies down
Taiwan’s president Tsai Ing-wen met frontline fighter pilots to express her gratitude for showing “determination” against the Chinese army’s war games that have finally ended.
Ms Tsai arrived at the army base in the central Taiwanese city of Taichung on Friday to meet fighter pilots who were stationed at the frontline air base of Magong in the Taiwan Strait.
She thanked the pilots for their hard work and for sticking to their posts round 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 shared by the presidential office.
Ms Tsai reiterated that Taipei would neither “escalate conflict nor provoke disputes” but would protect its sovereignty, democracy, and freedom.
She said the Taiwanese military will continue to strengthen and upgrade its combat preparedness.
Her meeting with the pilots comes a week after her return to the island. Ms Tsai was on a 10-day-long contentious trip during which she met US House of Representatives speaker Kevin McCarthy, ignoring warnings of retaliation from mainland China
China began three-days of military drills around Taiwan on Saturday, “sealing off” the island and simulating a blockade and bombardment.
The war games, which formally ended on Monday, continued in the waters around Taiwan on a reduced scale.
On Friday morning, Taiwan’s defence ministry said it had not spotted any Chinese military aircraft crossing the sensitive Taiwan Strait median line – the unofficial boundary between the two countries that Beijing does not recognise – in the past 24 hours.
Taiwan’s defence ministry said it intercepted four Chinese military aircraft and eight warships around Taiwan.
But the accompanying map in the morning report by the minister did not show any Chinese warplanes crossing the median line.
Ms Tsai noted that they had been constantly upgrading Taiwan-made Ching-kuo Indigenous Defence Fighter (IDF) jets to more advanced versions since they entered service in 1997.
“In the future, we will continue to upgrade software and hardware facilities and strengthen personnel training,” she said.
On Thursday, Mr Xi urged his military to strengthen its readiness for “real combat” following the country’s recent display of force around Taiwan.
Inspecting his country’s Southern Theatre Command navy, he stressed the need to deepen military training and preparation, state media reported.
“You must strengthen real-combat military training,” Mr Xi said, according to the official news service of Xinhua, adding that China must be “innovative in its concepts and methods of combat”.
