Sharp aircraft drop near Taiwan raises alarm

Taiwan has not detected a single Chinese military aircraft around the island for nine of the past 10 days, leaving experts puzzling over the reasons for the dramatic reduction in sorties.

China claims Taiwan is part of its territory and has threatened to use force to bring the island under its control. Beijing has stepped up military pressure on Taiwan in recent years, deploying fighter jets and warships around the island on a near-daily basis.

But since February 28, only two Chinese aircraft have been recorded in a single 24-hour period near Taiwan, according to an AFP tally of figures released daily by the defence ministry. That compares with 86 for the same period last year. It is the longest stretch of no detections since AFP began recording the figures in 2024.

Experts have been speculating about the reasons for the sharp drop in Chinese aircraft deployments, with possibilities ranging from China’s annual political gathering, known as the “two sessions”, currently underway in Beijing, to its recent military purges.

Other reasons include US President Donald Trump’s scheduled trip to Beijing later this month to meet his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, and the Middle East conflict.

“I didn’t expect to be worried about the cessation of PLA operations around Taiwan, but the lack of a rational explanation is disconcerting,” Drew Thompson, a senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies at Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University, wrote on Substack. Another longtime observer of the Chinese military told AFP it was “not clear at all how to read it”.

Ben Lewis of the analysis website PLATracker said it was “clearly a significant disruption to routine activity”.

“The longer the activity gap persists, the more concerned I will be about broader implications, but I have not seen any indications that the PRC is preparing for any major kinetic action,” Lewis told AFP.