Taiwan has warned China that it will respond in kind if fired upon after Chinese fighter jets escalated operations around the island, flying repeatedly across the midpoint of the strait that separates it from the mainland.
Beijing regards Taiwan as a renegade province and has vowed to reunify it by force if necessary.
Tensions between the two have risen rapidly, particularly after David Hale, the US under-secretary of state, paid an official visit to Taipei last week as Washington pushed $7 billion of arms sales including cruise missiles, mines and drones to the island. After the forays by Chinese jets, Taiwan’s defence ministry said that it had clearly defined procedures to deal with the “high frequency of harassment and threats from the enemy’s