China has sent a record-breaking number of warplanes across the median line of the Taiwan Strait, at a moment the annual NATO summit in Washington is still underway. Taiwan’s Ministry of Defense announced in a statement that “66 PLA aircraft and seven PLAN vessels operating around Taiwan were detected up until 6am [22:00 GMT Wednesday] today.”

Among those 66, some 56 of the aircraft crossed over the median line, which serves as an unofficial border between the two sides, after which Taiwan scrambled aircraft and put missile systems on high alert “in response” to the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) incursions.

Image of PLA nuclear-capable H-6 bomber monitored by Taiwan’s military Wednesday.

Taiwan’s Defense Ministry issued what it described as two recent pictures of a Chinese J-16 fighter and a nuclear-capable H-6 bomber while announcing, “The military has a detailed grasp of the activities in the seas and waters around the Taiwan Strait, including of the Chinese communists’ aircraft and ships.”

Simultaneous to all of this, Beijing directly addressed the ongoing NATO summit, accusing the Western alliance of “hyping up the so-called China threat” with statements full of “obvious lies and smears.”

It was specifically responding to a Wednesday communique issued by NATO leaders, which called out China as a
“decisive enabler” of Russia’s war against Ukraine. The message also described China as posing challenges to Europe and its security.

Below is the section of the lengthy NATO communique pertaining to China: 

The People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) stated ambitions and coercive policies continue to challenge our interests, security and values. The deepening strategic partnership between Russia and the PRC and their mutually reinforcing attempts to undercut and reshape the rules-based international order, are a cause for profound concern.  We are confronted by hybrid, cyber, space, and other threats and malicious activities from state and non-state actors.

Taiwan’s foreign ministry had stated just ahead of the summit that it “welcomes NATO’s continuous increase in attention to peace and stability in the Indo-Pacific region in recent years, and its active strengthening of exchanges and interactions with countries in the Indo-Pacific region.”

As for the median line incursions, which have seen an uptick ever since the election victory in January new Taiwan President Lai Ching-te, which Beijing has called a ‘separatist’, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Lin Jian vowed that “The determination of China to safeguard its sovereignty and territorial integrity remains unrelenting.”

66 PLA aircraft and 7 PLAN vessels operating around Taiwan were detected up until 6 a.m. (UTC+8) today. 56 of the aircraft crossed the median line and entered Taiwan’s northern, southwestern and southeasten ADIZ. pic.twitter.com/UnNyjvbcDI

— 國防部 Ministry of National Defense, R.O.C. 🇹🇼 (@MoNDefense) July 11, 2024

These current highly provocative PLA military maneuvers also likely come as a response to Ching-te’s mulling a possible stopover in the United States while potentially visiting other nations with ties to Taiwan. China has reacted with muscular military exercises in past such visits of Taiwan delegations to the US.