A flight map of Chinese activities released by the island\u2019s ministry showed that 40 of the planes had crossed the median line in the Taiwan Strait \u2014 an unofficial barrier that separates the island from the mainland that the U.S. drew in 1954 \u2014 or entered Taiwan\u2019s self-declared air defense identification zone (ADIZ). It is the highest number of Chinese aircraft that have entered Taiwan\u2019s ADIZ in a 24-hour period since October 2021, when 56 planes made the incursion in one day, CNN reported<\/a>.<\/p>\n “The continuous military harassment by the Communist military can easily lead to a sharp increase in tensions and worsen regional security,” Taiwan\u2019s defense ministry said in a statement<\/a>. “We call on the Beijing authorities to take responsibility and immediately stop such destructive unilateral actions.”<\/p>\n The drills have come at a delicate time in cross-strait relations in the months leading up to Taiwan\u2019s presidential election in January 2024. On September 12, China\u2019s Central Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC) and the State Council jointly issued a 21-point plan<\/a> to turn Fujian Province \u2014 situated on China\u2019s southeastern coast opposite Taiwan \u2014 into a demonstration zone for \u201cintegrated development\u201d with Taiwan.<\/p>\n That same week, China had sent 35 Chinese warplanes and more than 20 Chinese warships<\/a> in the areas around the island, shortly after the U.S. and Canada had sailed their own warships<\/a> through the Taiwan Strait. It was the largest-ever military exercise conducted by China\u2019s naval forces around Taiwan, and included its second aircraft carrier, Shandong, which Taiwan\u2019s defense ministry said passed 60 nautical miles from its coastline.<\/p>\n China has since announced<\/a> that it will impose sanctions on U.S. aerospace and defense firms Northrop Grumman and Lockheed Martin for \u201cdeliberately supplying\u201d arms to Taiwan. \u201cWe call on the U.S. to earnestly abide by the one-China principle and the stipulations of the three China-U.S. joint communiqu\u00e9s, stop arms sales to Taiwan, stop military collusion with Taiwan, and stop arming Taiwan, otherwise it will be met with China\u2019s resolute response,\u201d Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson M\u00e1o N\u00edng \u6bdb\u5b81 said when announcing the sanctions on September 15.<\/p>\n But two superpowers have been engaging in a series of high-level talks ahead of a possible meeting between X\u00ed J\u00ecnp\u00edng \u4e60\u8fd1\u5e73 and Joe Biden at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation leaders meeting in November. Yesterday, Chinese Vice President H\u00e1n Zh\u00e8ng \u97e9\u6b63 and U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken had a \u201ccandid and constructive discussion\u201d on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly in New York, according to the readout from Washington<\/a>. Blinken had raised a number of key issues with Han, including \u201cmaintaining peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Taiwan\u2019s Ministry of Defense reported a \u201crecent new high\u201d of over 100 Chinese aircraft around the island. It\u2019s the second record-breaking military drill that China has conducted near Taiwan in the past week. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":19964,"featured_media":285188,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"episode_type":"","audio_file":"","cover_image":"","cover_image_id":"","duration":"","filesize":"","date_recorded":"","explicit":"","block":"","filesize_raw":"","footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[12902],"tags":[14425,21538,14045,14681,21539,13795],"column":[],"class":[],"coauthors":[18088],"acf":[],"la_post_categories":{"politics-and-current-affairs":"Politics & Current Affairs"},"la_post_tags":{"access":"Access","airforce":"airforce","military":"military","pla":"PLA","reunification":"reunification","taiwan":"Taiwan"},"content_writeup":{"rendered":" Here\u2019s what else you need to know about China today:<\/p>\n Today Chinese state media \ud83d\udda4U.S.A.: <\/strong>Beijing is sending a very clear message with top stories on the People\u2019s Daily front page<\/a> and Xinhua News Agency\u2019s website<\/a> about X\u00ed J\u00ecnp\u00edng \u4e60\u8fd1\u5e73 replying to a letter from Chairman of the Sino-American Aviation Heritage Foundation, an American NGO that commemorates the Flying Tigers, American military pilots who helped oppose the Japanese invasion of China from 1941 to 1942.<\/p>\n Whenever Chinese officials mention the Flying Tigers, it\u2019s a sure sign they want to talk to their American counterparts. This looks like a signal that Xi will after all attend the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) meetings in the U.S. from November 15 to 17 this year.<\/p>\n China made it easier for foreigners<\/strong> to apply for visas<\/strong> by reducing the amount of information needed to fill out the application forms, China\u2019s Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced today<\/a>. The new online application forms, which went live today, shorten the list of where a person has traveled from five years to one year, and require only the highest level of education that an applicant reached instead of a full history.<\/p>\n The changes are part of a broader effort to lure tourists back into the country. \u201cApplicants will spend much less time filling in the forms and expect a more streamlined visa application process,\u201d the foreign ministry said in a statement. The ministry will always \u201cfacilitate people-to-people exchanges between China and foreign countries to promote China\u2019s high-quality development and opening up.\u201d<\/p>\n Two tornadoes have left at least 10 people dead <\/strong>in the eastern province of Jiangsu. The first one in the city of Suqian killed five people and left four others severely injured, Chinese state media reported today<\/a>. A second tornado in the evening left five people dead<\/a> in Yancheng city, about 190 kilometers (120 miles) southeast of Suqian.<\/p>\n China installed two ground stations on reefs in the disputed South China Sea<\/strong> as part of its BeiDou satellite navigation system, Chinese state television CCTV reported<\/a>. The stations, which began operating on September 15, have been installed at lighthouses situated on North Reef and Bombay Reef in the Paracel Islands \u2014 territories that are also claimed by Vietnam and Taiwan.<\/p>\n They are located strategically near an international sea route through the central area of the South China Sea, in what CCTV described as an effort to \u201cserve as strong support\u201d to help monitor ships and to assist ecological protection and ship navigation in one of the busiest waterways in the world.<\/p>\n The U.S. has found no evidence that Huawei can produce smartphones with advanced semiconductors at scale<\/strong>, U.S. Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo said yesterday<\/a>. Speculation has swirled over Huawei\u2019s ability to make its own advanced chips, after the Chinese tech giant rolled out its new Mate 60 Pro smartphone<\/a> amid the sanctions the U.S. imposed since 2019 to curb its access to high-end chipmaking technologies.<\/p>\n The Mate 60 Pro\u2019s main chip, the Kirin 9000S, uses the 7-nanometer (nm) process designed by Huawei\u2019s chip division HiSilicon and produced by China\u2019s chipmaking giant SMIC. That means that Huawei has joined the ranks of an elite group of Big Tech companies, such as the U.S.\u2019s Apple and Taiwan\u2019s TSMC, that are able to make advanced semiconductors.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, China accused the U.S. of infiltrating Huawei servers back in 2009 and continuously monitoring them, China\u2019s Ministry of State Security said in a WeChat post<\/a> yesterday.<\/p>\n No germanium and gallium products left China in August<\/strong>, according to customs data<\/a>, after the country in July imposed export curbs on the key metals<\/a> used to make semiconductors and other electronics.<\/p>\n"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thechinaproject.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/285186"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thechinaproject.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thechinaproject.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thechinaproject.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/19964"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thechinaproject.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=285186"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thechinaproject.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/285186\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thechinaproject.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/285188"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thechinaproject.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=285186"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thechinaproject.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=285186"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thechinaproject.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=285186"},{"taxonomy":"column","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thechinaproject.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/column?post=285186"},{"taxonomy":"class","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thechinaproject.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/class?post=285186"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thechinaproject.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=285186"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/thechinaproject.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/09\/image1-6.png\")
\nA flight map of Chinese activities from September 17\u201318 from Taiwan\u2019s Ministry of Defense<\/a>. <\/em><\/p>\nCross-strait tensions<\/h3>\n