Thomas J. Shattuck and Benjamin Lewis
On September 17, 2020, the Republic of China’s (Taiwan’s) Ministry of National Defense (MND) released its first-ever “real-time military update” documenting two incursions into the country’s air defense identification zone (ADIZ) by two Y-8 anti-submarine warfare aircraft from the People’s Republic of China (PRC) the day prior. An ADIZ is “an area of airspace over land or water, in which the ready identification, location, and control of all aircraft . . . is required in the interest of national security,” essentially a buffer zone before an aircraft reaches a country’s defense area or territorial airspace. For Taiwan, its ADIZ includes the all-important median line of the Taiwan Strait, a line created in 1955 by General Benjamin Davis, Jr., that divides the waterway in half, originally meant to deconflict military operations by Taiwan and China.
Since 2020, Taiwan’s ADIZ has become the center of the PRC’s military activity around Taiwan. That first report in 2020—containing a map of Taiwan’s ADIZ, the approximate flight paths of the aircraft, and photos of the aircraft taken by Taiwan’s air force—started a new practice in Taipei for publicizing military pressure and coercion by Beijing.
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