Asia-Pacific

Taiwan shoots down suspected Chinese drone for first time

Taipei acts against uncrewed aerial vehicle in tougher response to Beijing’s military pressure

Taiwanese chip tycoon Robert Tsao, founder of United Microelectronics Corporation, has announced a plan to donate $100 million to help improve. Taiwan's combat capabilities. Photograph: Ritchie B Tongo/PA

Kathrin Hille in Taipei
Thu Sep 1 2022 - 15:58

Taiwan shot down a drone over one of its outlying islands for the first time on Thursday, as Taipei begins to respond more forcefully to a sustained Chinese military pressure campaign.

The Taiwanese army said an unidentified commercial drone equipped with cameras intruded into restricted airspace over the waters around Shihyu, a Taiwan-controlled islet less than 4km from Chinese territory.

“After warnings and attempts to expel it remained without effect, [soldiers in] the garrison brought it down with defensive shots,” said the army command on the island of Kinmen, which is around 20km from the Chinese city of Xiamen.

Taiwan’s defence ministry declined to say whether the uncrewed aerial vehicle was Chinese, but the incident follows a series of similar intrusions by civilian-use drone models into Kinmen airspace over the past two weeks, all of which left in the direction of Xiamen. On Tuesday, Taipei said it had fired shots at one such drone to expel it.

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The action against drones comes as Taiwan is trying to show more resolve in deterring Chinese aircraft and warships from flying and sailing closer to its territory. These Chinese activities have continued since Beijing held unprecedented week-long exercises in response to a visit to Taipei by US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in August.

Earlier on Thursday, Robert Tsao, founder of United Microelectronics Corporation, Taiwan’s second-largest chipmaker, said he would give 600m new Taiwan dollars (€19.7m) to support a civil society initiative to train three million civilian fighters and 400m new Taiwan dollars to train a further 300,000 civilian marksmen. The donations were the first portions of $100mn (€100.5m) that Tsao has pledged towards strengthening Taiwan’s defences.

Mr Tsao (75), who ran afoul of Taiwanese authorities in the past by seeking to circumvent restrictions on investment in China, has morphed over the past month into one of the most vocal critics of Beijing.

Following his $100mn €100.5m pledge, Mr Tsao gave up Singaporean citizenship and restored his citizenship of Taiwan. Facing journalists on Thursday wearing a bulletproof vest, he proudly displayed a Taiwan identity card issued the previous day and said he wanted to die nowhere else.

Raging against the Chinese Communist party’s claims that Taiwan has been part of China since ancient times, Mr Tsao said the CCP was “suffering from a mental disorder”. He urged his compatriots to acknowledge the threat the country faced from the People’s Republic.

The Chinese military announced that its exercises around Taiwan were completed on August 10th, but it has since maintained air and naval activity at much higher levels and much closer to Taiwanese territory than before the drills.

According to data published by Taiwan’s ministry of defence, People’s Liberation Army aircraft flew into the Taiwanese air defence identification zone 444 times in August, more than double the previous highest monthly number since Taipei started making such intrusions public two years ago.

China’s foreign ministry on Thursday referred requests for comment on the shooting down of the drone to the defence ministry, which made no immediate statement, Reuters reported. On Monday, the foreign ministry said Chinese drones flying over Chinese territory were “nothing to make a fuss about”.

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2022

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