No Chinese warplanes but 13 ships stay around Taiwan as Typhoon Champi closes in

Taiwan's defence ministry detected no Chinese military aircraft around the island in the 24 hours to 6 a.m. on Thursday 22 October, but six People's Liberation Army Navy ships and seven Chinese official ships remained active in the waters around Taiwan over the same period, it said.

Because no aircraft were detected, the ministry published no flight-path map for the period, the Liberty Times reported. The ministry said Taiwan's forces were using mission aircraft, navy ships and shore-based missile systems to keep the Chinese vessels under close watch and respond as needed.

The daily report came as Typhoon Champi bore down on Taiwan. The Liberty Times set the figures against the storm's approach and said China was keeping up its grey-zone pressure at sea even as its aircraft stayed away. The ministry itself did not say why no PLA aircraft were detected, and it gave no breakdown of where the 13 ships were operating.

The quiet skies followed a busier day. For the 24 hours to 6 a.m. on 21 October, the ministry had reported 29 PLA aircraft sorties and six navy ships around Taiwan, according to EBC News. Taiwan News, which keeps a running tally of the ministry's reports, said Taiwan had tracked Chinese military aircraft 163 times and ships 265 times so far in October.

Hours after the daily report, Taiwan's top intelligence official gave a fuller picture of the pressure at sea. National Security Bureau Director-General Tsai Ming-yen told reporters before a session of the Legislative Yuan's Foreign and National Defense Committee that China's grey-zone harassment at sea was growing more active, and he set out what he called several significant trends around Taiwan.

First, he said, China Coast Guard activity in the waters east of Taiwan and in the western Pacific was becoming increasingly routine. Second, those coast guard patrols were also being used to support Chinese marine scientific research. Third, maritime militia fishing boats had begun working alongside coast guard ships in waters east and southwest of Taiwan. Tsai said militia boats used to operate mainly in the South China Sea, but similar harassment patterns were now appearing around Taiwan.

The Central News Agency, in the report carried by the Economic Daily News, noted that Chinese militia vessels had already appeared in waters east of Taiwan in August. At that time, the defence ministry accused Beijing of dressing up harassment as law enforcement and scientific research in order to widen its area of activity without open conflict and create a false impression of jurisdiction, and said the armed forces would work with the coast guard to respond.

Tsai said the bureau and Taiwan's coast guard had a close liaison mechanism. The coast guard concentrates on reporting and handling individual incidents, while the bureau analyses the overall pattern of Chinese activity and exchanges intelligence with international partners, he said. He was at the legislature to present the bureau's report on national intelligence work for the second half of the year and to take questions from lawmakers.