Taiwan Fires Warning Shots as Chinese Drones Approach Kinmen Islands

The incident comes after weeks of escalating tensions between Beijing and Taipei in the wake of US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's controversial visit to the island on August 2.

The Taiwanese military fired warning shots near Chinese unmanned aerial vehicles operating near the Kinmen Islands on Tuesday, Taiwan's Defense Ministry has indicated.

"The Army's Kinmen Defense Command stated that from 4:23 pm today, three batches and three sorties of drones were discovered over Dadan, Erdan and Shiyu," the MoD said in a press statement.

"At 5:59 pm, a batch of drones entered the airspace over restricted waters in the Erdan area a second time. Defenders issued warnings in accordance with established procedures. As they continued to circle, warning shots were fired to drive them away. The drones flew away in the direction of Xiamen at 6:00 pm. The Ministry of Defense will continue to maintain vigilance and close monitoring," the MoD said.

Chinese officials have yet to comment on the incident.

The Kinmen Islands are situated less than 5 km from the coast of mainland China, next to the city of Xiamen. They are one of the few territories near the mainland which remained under Taipei's control after communist forces defeated the nationalists in the final phase of the Chinese Civil War of 1945-1949 and forced them to flee to Taiwan.

China-US tensions over Taiwan escalated dramatically earlier this month after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, the third most powerful official in Washington, traveled to the island. Pelosi's visit has been followed up by trips to the island by other US lawmakers and officials. China considers the visits a violation of the treaties on which China-US relations were built in the 1970s and 1980s, under which Washington is required to refrain from any formal diplomatic contacts with Taiwan, which calls itself the Republic of China, as part of the US' recognition of the PRC as the sole China in the world.

The whirlwind of tensions which followed Pelosi's trip has caused a major ramping up of military activity near the island, with China staging weeks of drills and flying and sailing dozens of aircraft and warships through the Taiwan Strait, and the Pentagon deploying its own assets in the region.

Earlier Tuesday, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian accused Washington and Taipei of consciously provoking tensions in the Taiwan Strait, and said that it was "the US and Taiwan separatist forces, not China, that seek to change the status quo" over the island to try to "contain" the PRC.

Tensions between China and the US over Taiwan have escalated dramatically under the Biden administration, with the US president repeatedly vowing to "defend" the island in case of a Chinese invasion, breaking with the decades-old US policy of "strategic ambiguity" toward Taipei.

Chinese President Xi Jinping has made Taiwan's reunification with the mainland a central plank of his national rejuvenation campaign, emphasizing that the process should be peaceful, and should culminate in Taiwan's governance under the "One China, Two Systems" model currently applied to Hong Kong and Macau. While some elements of the Kuomintang - the nationalist government which once ruled large swathes of China and that governed Taiwan for decades after 1949, have expressed support for reunification, their successors, President Tsai Ing-wen's governing Democratic Progressives, have pushed to maintain Taiwan's de-facto independence.