China did not just fly planes on its coastline. They crossed the median line, which is an unofficial line that has been dividing the Taiwan Strait for decades. Planes and vessels from China and those from Taiwan would not cross this line to show mutual respect. China is purposely breaking this unwritten convention. See how they usually just barely cross the median line, fly parallel to the line for a bit and head back? Neither are the planes passenger planes, they are fighter jets. This is different from the US sending ships through the Strait. Sending a military ship through the Strait is a provocation to China, but it is much weaker than the direct provocation of the fighter jets crossing the median line.
Hate to break it to you, but even the US state department recognizes that there’s no such country as Taiwan. Please call it by its correct name, “Chinese Taipei,” so people know what you’re talking about.
you realize that the uptick in frequency of these ‘provocations’ only started in response to the pelosi visit? the incident that had a considerable portion of the entire chinese population howling for the cpc to shoot down the plane and engulf the world in nuclear fire? this is the cpc’s way of appeasing its very large and very rabid nationalist constituency (who are very disappointed that they have not died in a nuclear armageddon, btw) and it is a meme on the chinese internet that despite all of its rhetoric, this pathetic level of ‘not touching you’ fuckery is somehow the lowest that the cpc is willing to stoop to when faced with a de jure violation of its sovereignty.
This is the epistemological stumbling block of living in the west, is this cultural remnant of christianity that compels us to view all things first and foremost through the lens of good or evil, moral or immoral, fault and blame.
States are not perfect frictionless spheres floating in a vaccum and acting purely off some set of moral principles. They are enormous machines rooted into existence by countless interfaces, big and small, with the world as it exists. A state operates on material conditions, on probabilities, contingencies and eventualities. The number of trigger states in a computer is nothing compared to the volume of procedure and protocol involved in the running of a society. With this in mind, the more relevant question to ask with any geopolitical event is not “Who is morally responsible for this?” but “Is this outcome a logical one given our understanding of the factors at play?”
It probably does violate standing diplomatic agreements with the PRC over how that sort of thing would be handled. There was a lot of pushback in Taiwan because they saw it (correctly) as pointless pot-stirring.
Anyway, I think most of the flights that aren’t innocuous (and many of them are or they wouldn’t need to have such bullshit articles) are drills in preparation for the possibility of the US using Taiwan as a military platform as it has been angling for in the past. They aren’t just dick swinging or whatever, China doesn’t want to take any risks in the event of a military conflict, though it would prefer such a conflict not take place.
They crossed the median line
idk dog, the wording in the article leaves some weird wiggle room.
Of those aircraft, the ministry said 10 had
eithercrossed the median line of the Taiwan Strait, which previously served as an unofficial barrier between the two sides,orentered the southwestern part of Taiwan’s air defense identification zone, or ADIZ.
