HONG KONG, October 3. /TASS/. At least 11 aircraft of the Chinese People's Liberation Army (PLA) entered Taiwan's air defense identification zone (ADIZ) on Tuesday morning, as follows from a statement on the website of Taiwan's defense ministry.

On the morning of October 3, PLA aircraft including J-10, J-16, and Sukhoi-30 fighter jets, Y-8 and Y-9 aircraft, and unmanned aerial vehicles were detected. Eleven of these aircraft crossed the median line of the Taiwan Strait and entered the island's air defense identification zone north and southwest of the island to conduct joint combat patrols with PRC ships, it said.

The Taiwanese army responded by using aircraft, ships, as well as land-based anti-aircraft missile systems to monitor the aircraft.

As Taiwan News reported earlier, in September Taiwan's defense ministry reported a total of 565 PLA aircraft flying near the island. Of these, 225 entered the island's air defense identification zone. In September, the largest PLA operation near the island in one day in at least several years was recorded, with 103 military aircraft of the PRC armed forces identified near Taiwan on September 18.

As Taiwan News wrote with reference to researcher Ben Lewis, the total number of flights in Taiwan's air defense zone in September was the second largest this year. Such flights were most frequent in April, when mainland China’s 259 aircraft entered Taiwan's air defense identification zone, according to Lewis' calculations.

According to the Taiwanese military, April's upsurge in flights was Beijing's reaction to a meeting between US House Speaker Kevin McCarthy and Taiwanese Chief of Staff Tsai Ing-wen in California. It was the first meeting on US soil between the speaker of the lower house of US Congress and the island's chief of staff since Washington severed diplomatic relations with the Taiwanese side in 1979.

Taiwan’s Air Defense Identification Zone

Taiwan's Air Defense Identification Zone, which the island proclaimed unilaterally, is 492,000 square kilometers in area and exceeds by far the island's airspace. It also covers the waters around it, the Taiwan Strait and part of the airspace over mainland China’s provinces of Fujian, Jiangxi and Zhejiang.

Taiwan has been governed by its local administration since 1949 when the remaining Kuomintang forces led by Chiang Kai-shek (1887-1975) fled to the island after being defeated in China's civil war. Since then, Taiwan has preserved the flag and some other symbols of the Republic of China that had existed in mainland China before the Communists came to power. Beijing regards the island as one of its provinces.