Sharp drop in Chinese military aircraft near Taiwan raises questions

China claims Taiwan is part of its territory and has threatened to use force to bring the island under its control.

Beijing has stepped up military pressure on Taiwan in recent years, deploying fighter jets and warships around the island on a near-daily basis.

But since February 28, only two Chinese aircraft have been recorded in a single 24-hour period near Taiwan, according to an AFP tally of figures released daily by the defence ministry.

That compares with 86 for the same period last year. It is the longest stretch of no detections since AFP began recording the figures in 2024.

An average of six Chinese warships have been spotted on a daily basis around the island in the past 10 days, which was the same as last year.

Chinese military sorties around Taiwan also fell around 42 percent in January and February compared with the same period last year. The number of warships was about 4.5 percent lower than a year ago.

Experts have been speculating about the reasons for the sharp drop in Chinese aircraft deployments, with possibilities ranging from China's annual political gathering, known as the "two sessions", currently underway in Beijing, to its recent military purges.

Other reasons include US President Donald Trump's scheduled trip to Beijing later this month to meet his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, and the Middle East conflict.

"I didn't expect to be worried about the cessation of PLA operations around Taiwan, but the lack of a rational explanation is disconcerting," Drew Thompson, a senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies at Singapore's Nanyang Technological University, wrote on Substack.

Ben Lewis of the analysis website PLATracker said it was "clearly a significant disruption to routine activity".

"The longer the activity gap persists, the more concerned I will be about broader implications, but I have not seen any indications that the PRC is preparing for any major kinetic action," Lewis told AFP.

Su Tzu-yun, a military expert at Taipei's Institute for National Defense and Security Research, surmised Beijing might be trying to "weaken public support" for Taiwan's plans to increase its defence spending.

Taiwan's President Lai Ching-te has proposed $40 billion in extra defence spending by his government over eight years, but the plan has been blocked by the opposition-controlled parliament.

Other analysts were not surprised by the easing of aircraft activity.

"PLA air incursions into Taiwan's ADIZ drop to/near zero around the time of the annual 'two sessions' every year," Brian Hart, deputy director and fellow of the China Power Project at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies, wrote on X.

"If this pattern persists well beyond the two sessions, then it would be unusual. But I don't think there's evidence of anything unusual yet."

A Taiwanese security official told AFP that Beijing may be trying to "create a false impression that China is easing its threats against Taiwan in order to deceive the US into reducing its support for Taiwan's security".

"We must not let our guard down," the official said.