The aircraft represent part of the total of 141 F-16 aircraft owned by Taiwan, and complement the powerful fleet so far made up of an older model from the 1990s that will be fully updated by the end of 2023.
Tsai said the upgrade project shows “the strength of Taiwan’s cooperation with the US defense industry” as the island has once again become a important point of tension in the relationship between the United States and China.
Official relations between China and Taiwan were suspended in 1949, after the forces of the Chinese nationalist Kuomintang party suffered a defeat in the civil war against the Communist Party of China and relocated to the island.
Links were only reestablished at the business and informal level in the late 1980s.
Beijing, which claims its sovereignty over the island, has intensified its actions to isolate Taiwan on the international scene and stop any attempt to recognize this territory as an independent state, which has its own government.
The deployment of this first squad comes at a time of high tensions between China and the United States over the future of Taiwan.
Over the past decade, China has strengthened its military to such an extent that Taiwanese and US military officials have publicly expressed fears that it could launch an invasion of the island.
Following statements by the US president Joe Biden hinting that the United States was ready to intervene if China attacked the island, American diplomats returned to a more classical and subtle line, multiplying the warnings and insisting on their willingness to “dissuade” Beijing from any military intervention.
China has criticized the sales of US military equipment to Taiwan, imposing, in response, sanctions on US arms giants such as Boeing, Raytheon and Lockheed Martin.
This week, during a remote bilateral summit between Biden and the Chinese president, Xi Jinping, the tension around this issue became apparent.
Xi warned Biden that fueling Taiwan’s independence would be “playing with fire.”
“Taiwanese authorities have tried many times to lean on the United States for independence … Some people in the United States try to ‘use Taiwan to control China,'” Xi said.
“This trend is very dangerous and it is like playing with fire, and those who play with fire get burned,” he warned.
Source From: Ambito
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