HONG KONG, February 15. /TASS/. The Taiwanese military registered the approach of 21 aircraft of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) and six warships of the PLA Navy near the island in the past day, Taiwan’s Ministry of National Defense said in a statement on its website.

According to it, 14 aircraft crossed the median line of the Taiwan Strait and flew into the island’s air defense identification zone north and southwest of it over the past 24 hours.

Taiwanese aircraft, vessels and ground-based air defense systems were dispatched to monitor them, the statement reads.

Taiwan has been governed by its own administration since 1949, when the remnants of the Kuomintang forces led by Chiang Kai-shek (1887-1975) fled there after their defeat in the Chinese Civil War. Beijing considers Taiwan a province of the People’s Republic of China.