A J-16D fighter jet (third from right) is seen at the Xiangtang airbase in Jiangxi in this satellite image. Photo / Kanwa Defence Review
China's military has deployed its state-of-art electronic warfare fighter jet to an eastern airbase near Taiwan, as record numbers of military flights were launched near the island nation over the past week.
Satellite images released by Canada-based Kanwa Defence Review show a J-16D fighter jet, designed for electronic warfare, being housed at an airbase in Jiangxi province.
Andrei Chang, editor-in-chief of the defence magazine, said satellite imagery showed the J-16D had been deployed to the Xiangtang airbase in Nanchang, Jiangxi in May, South China Morning Post reported.
A separate image from January shows another airbase – in Changxing county, Zhejiang province – is being expanded, with new hangars and other infrastructure being built.
"All the airbases along the southeast coast are being expanded and upgraded to house more fighter jets as more and more large-scale air incursions are in the pipeline," Chang said.
"The deployment of 52 aircraft [in the first sortie] on Monday shows the PLA's aviation combat strength. I expect more types of PLA aircraft will be sent in future, with the biggest sorties involving more than 100 [planes]."
SCMP reported a military source in Beijing confirmed the J-16D had been deployed to the airbase, saying it was part of "part of combat-readiness training".
China has been showing a new intensity and military sophistication as it steps up its harassment of the island it claims as its own and asserts its territorial ambitions in the region.
Beijing claims self-ruled Taiwan as its own territory, to be brought under its control by force if necessary, and the PLA has sent planes into the island's air defence zone nearly every day in the past year.
Monday saw the biggest show of force so far, involving 56 fighter jets led by dozens of J-16 multi role strike fighters – designed to be used in a possible conflict with Taiwan.
At the same time as the flights, the US stepped up naval manoeuvres in the Indo-Pacific with its allies, challenging Beijing's territorial claims in critical waterways.
Taiwanese Defense Minister Chiu Kuo-cheng told legislators on Wednesday that the situation "is the most severe in the 40 years since I've enlisted."
While most agree that war is not imminent, Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen warned that more is at stake if Beijing makes good on past threats to seize the island by force if necessary.
"If Taiwan were to fall, the consequences would be catastrophic for regional peace and the democratic alliance system," she wrote in an impassioned op-ed in Foreign Affairs magazine published on Tuesday. "It would signal that in today's global contest of values, authoritarianism has the upper hand over democracy."
China regularly flies military aircraft into Taiwan's "air defence identification zone", international airspace that Taiwan counts as a buffer in its defence strategy, although previous flights have usually involved a handful of planes at most.
Perhaps more significant than the number of planes was the constitution of the group, with fighters, bombers and airborne early warning aircraft, said Euan Graham, a defence analyst with the International Institute for Strategic Studies in Singapore.
"That's the level of sophistication - it looks like a strike package, and that's part of the step-up in pressure," he said. "This is not a couple of fighters coming close and then going straight back after putting one wing across the median; this is a much more purposeful manoeuvre."
Controlling Taiwan and its airspace is key to China's military strategy, with the area where the most recent sorties took place also leading to the west Pacific and the South China Sea.
The latest manoeuvres bring the total number of flights to more than 815 as of Monday since the Taiwanese government started publicly releasing the numbers a little more than a year ago.
China has been rapidly improving and strengthening its military, and the most recent flights demonstrate a greater level of technical expertise and power, said Chen-Yi Tu, a researcher at the Institute for National Defence and Security Research in Taiwan.
It's a marked contrast from 20, 30 years ago, when Chinese forces couldn't refuel in the air, or fly across the water, said Oriana Skylar Mastro, a fellow at Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University and non-resident senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, DC.
"I think China is trying to remind the US and Taiwan that this is not then, that they have options," she said. "They can do what they want, that they won't be deterred."
At the same time, many democracies have been increasingly vocal in their support of Taiwan and have stepped up naval operations in the area.
As China was conducting its most recent flights, 17 ships from six navies - the US, Britain, Japan, Netherlands, Canada and New Zealand - including three aircraft carriers and a Japanese helicopter carrier - carried out joint manoeuvres off the Japanese island of Okinawa, northeast of Taiwan, meant to show their commitment to a "free and open Indo-Pacific".
A few days earlier, the British frigate HMS Richmond transited through the Taiwan Strait, announcing its presence on Twitter and angering China, which condemned the move as a "meaningless display of presence with an insidious intention."
The international actions are an attempt to counter China's frequent claim that its own actions are in response to American moves, and demonstrate that democracies intend to defend established maritime laws and norms, Graham said.
"When the UK sends a ship through the Taiwan Strait for the first time since 2008 and it sailed down the median line, the point that it's making is that they know China knows where that line is," he said. "In order for the status quo to be meaningful, it has to be upheld and the most emphatic way to do that is to physically demonstrate with a government asset like a warship."
Australia, which also spoke out against China's recent flights, last month announced a deal with the US and Britain to obtain nuclear-powered submarines, which was seen as a strong statement it planned to play a greater role.
And Japan, which has long been cautious with its relations with China, a key trading partner, now considers the country a security threat amid Beijing's increasingly assertive activity in the regional seas and around the Taiwan Strait. New Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida said dialogue with China is important but Japan should also team up with like-minded democracies and step up its security alliance with the US and other partners while Tokyo also strengthens its defence capabilities.
"We are seeing a slow emergence of some sort of coalition of democracies in the region that are trying to come together to build some sort of mechanism to respond to Chinese behaviour in the region," said J Michael Cole, a Taipei-based senior fellow with Global Taiwan Institute in Washington, DC.
Under long-standing policy, the United States provides political and military support for Taiwan, but does not explicitly promise to defend it from a Chinese attack.
Still, as the US increases its military activities in the Indo-Pacific region, the Chinese response has been to increase its own, said Yue Gang, a retired Chinese army colonel and Beijing-based military commentator.
"The Biden administration has been increasing military deterrence against China, not only by dispatching many warships and warplanes, but also showcasing its allies," he said. "One of the possibilities is that the mainland hopes to send a signal it will not be misjudged as weak."
The Chinese flights into the Taiwanese defence buffer zone have forced Taiwan to scramble its own aircraft and anti-aircraft missile batteries, wearing down their readiness and reducing their capabilities, Yue said.
"Every time a warplane takes off, the engine life is reduced to some extent," he said.
In addition to keeping Taiwan on edge, the sorties also help the Chinese pilots keep their edge, and could eventually help give them an element of surprise "if the scenario is to eventually use hard power to resolve their unification claim over Taiwan," Graham said.
"It's hard to know if exercise 39 or exercise 57 is the one that isn't an exercise," he said.
For the moment, however, most agree that is not the immediate goal.
"It's more signalling and psychological warfare and a warning to the US to not be so close to Taiwan," Mastro said.
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