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29-05-2026
TAIPEI: Taiwan has said it is monitoring the second Chinese “joint combat readiness patrol” near the island in a week, accusing Beijing of being the sole source of instability in the Asia Pacific.
In a post on social media on Tuesday, Taiwan’s Ministry of National Defence said its forces had responded to the situation.
The comments come after United States President Donald Trump met Chinese President Xi Jinping earlier this month in Beijing, where the two leaders discussed Taiwan.
China claims the self-governing island as part of its territory. Taiwan rejects China’s sovereignty claims.
Taiwan’s National Defence Ministry said on Tuesday it had detected 29 Chinese aircraft, including fighter jets, and seven warships operating around the island. The ministry reported that 24 of the aerial sorties had crossed the median line, an unofficial maritime and aerial buffer zone that runs through the middle of the Taiwan Strait.
There was no immediate comment from Beijing, which does not recognize the boundary. Joseph Wu, secretary-general of Taiwan’s National Security Council, accused China of being the sole source of instability in the Asia Pacific region.
“For the 2nd time in a week, shortly after the Beijing summit, the PLA conducted a ‘joint combat readiness patrol’ around Taiwan. We also spotted the Liaoning carrier group in the West Pacific. This is unprovoked. The PRC is the sole source of instability in the IndoPacific,” he wrote on social media.
On Saturday, Wu said China had deployed more than 100 ships up and down the first island chain, an area that stretches from Japan down to Taiwan and into the Philippines.
Earlier this month, President Xi warned Trump that their two countries could clash over Taiwan if the issue is mishandled. Since then, Trump has cautioned Taipei against formally declaring independence from China, prompting the island to issue a statement saying it was “sovereign and independent” but planned to maintain the status quo.
Trump recently said he would speak directly with Taiwan’s leader, which would be a significant break from US protocol. American and Taiwanese leaders have not spoken directly since 1979, when Washington and Beijing formally established diplomatic relations. The US is Taiwan’s largest weapons supplier and is bound by law to provide the island with the means to defend itself. In December, Trump approved the largest-ever US weapons package for its ally.
Last week, however, Washington said it was pausing a $14bn arms sale to Taiwan to conserve munitions for the war on Iran.
Last week, Trump visited Beijing to meet with Xi, accompanied by a delegation of American business leaders, including the heads of Apple, Nvidia, BlackRock and Goldman Sachs.
Trump lavished praise on Xi, stating: “It’s an honor to be your friend, and the relationship between China and the USA is going to be better than ever before.”
Trump came away from the summit boasting of multiple trade deals, but Chinese statements made no mention of any such agreements. Trump also took care to publicly steer clear of Taiwan, at one point ignoring a reporter’s question about it.
Then, this week, news came that a $14bn arms deal between the US and Taiwan was on hold.
Whether this sentiment is undone by Trump’s apparent openness to talking to Taipei depends on his next move, something analysts say, given his erratic diplomatic overtures, can be hard to predict. (Int’l Monitoring Desk)
