There's been a surge in Chinese military activity around Taiwan, with Taiwan's defense ministry reporting 36 Chinese warplanes and seven Chinese naval ships operating around Taiwan in a 24-hour period.
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00:00There's been a surge in U.S. and Chinese military activity near Taiwan.
00:04Rick Loward is tracking developments for us.
00:06Rick, dozens of incursions are being reported.
00:09What do we know?
00:13So as you said, an unusually large amount of military activity around the country.
00:19Here's what we know so far.
00:21Taiwan's Ministry of National Defense reported that 36 Chinese military planes and seven
00:27Chinese navy vessels were operating around Taiwan in the 24 hours before 6 a.m. on Wednesday.
00:35Out of this, 13 Chinese planes were operating in an area southwest of Taiwan.
00:40This is the same location that a number of U.S. military planes were flying at around
00:45the same time.
00:46But what's interesting, in an unusual move, the Ministry of National Defense released
00:51a second statement just over an hour ago to say that between 9 a.m. and 12 p.m. on Wednesday,
00:57another 20 Chinese military planes were operating around Taiwan.
01:02The Ministry of National Defense calling this a joint combat readiness patrol by China and
01:06saying that Taiwan launched its own boats and planes in response.
01:12Now Beijing doesn't tell us why it's doing certain drills when.
01:16We're left to infer what China means by its military maneuvers like this.
01:21It could be that China saw that there were U.S. planes operating in an area that it says
01:26is part of its sovereign territory and therefore launched its own sorties in response.
01:31And China has also been known to do what are called so-called punishment drills, that is
01:36showing its distaste for Taiwan and its allies' actions done by them.
01:40And we do know that this week there has been some more details emerged of a big U.S. weapons
01:47purchase by Taiwan, weapons of course that Taiwan uses to counter those territorial claims
01:52by China.