Taiwan said China dialed down plans for a no-fly zone near the island after it complained about risks to flight safety, a rare possible instance of backtracking by Beijing as tensions between the two sides simmer.
China initially intended to impose the zone for “aerospace activities” from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. over three days next week, the Transportation Ministry in Taipei said in a statement Wednesday — just days after the People’s Liberation Army ended major military drills around the democracy.
Beijing later told Taipei that the zone would only be in place over about 27 minutes on Sunday morning after Taiwan protested about “a serious impact on aviation management in the region, seriously undermining the rights and safety of air traffic,” the ministry said. It called Beijing’s plans “unprecedented internationally.”
Taiwan’s deputy foreign minister, Roy Chun Lee, said the change came after “intense communications” between China and other parties in the region, without naming them.
Beijing hasn’t made any public announcement about a no-fly zone as of Thursday morning. The Civil Aviation Administration of China didn’t respond to a request for comment, and Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin avoided a question on the matter during a regular press briefing.
The episode comes amid the latest cross-strait tensions and would be a rare visible instance of compromise between Taipei and Beijing during such periods. The PLA just held three days of military exercises around Taiwan to show its displeasure with President Tsai Ing-wen meeting House Speaker Kevin McCarthy in the U.S. last week.
“It’s certainly unusual that Beijing revised its plans after a complaint from Taiwan,” said Wen-ti Sung, a specialist on Taiwanese politics and cross-strait relations at Australian National University.
Sung said the change Beijing made may be a sign of coordination problems between different parts of the government. “The aviation agency may have called for a more extended no-fly zone period out of technical necessity, but economic and foreign affairs portfolios subsequently scaled it back to minimize regional push back,” he said.
China’s original plan for the zone would have overlapped with the Group of Seven foreign ministers’ meeting in Karuizawa, Japan, which runs April 16-18.
The military drills that China just wrapped up involved sending warplanes into sensitive areas around Taiwan, including a record 54 flights across the median line in the strait or into Taiwan’s sensitive air-defense identification zone on Monday. Such forays are intended to intimidate the democracy militarily and wear down its much smaller armed forces.
The no-fly zone China plans is within Taiwan’s ADIZ, about 85 nautical miles from northern Taiwan, Yen Yu-hsien, a Taiwanese intelligence official in the Defense Ministry, said at a briefing in Taipei. China may plan to launch a satellite, he added.
Beijing restricted flights and shipping in six areas around Taiwan in August last year when it held military drills to protest a visit by then-House Speaker Nancy Pelolsi. Those exercises also involved China sending missiles over Taiwan.
China has started conducting satellite launches from platforms just off its coast in recent years. The Asian nation launched five satellites on Long March 11 rockets from a platform in the East China Sea in April last year, state media reported, citing a rocket designer.
Another rocket designer said sea launches could be safer than on land because debris could fall into water.
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(Bloomberg News writers Daniela Wei, Claire Che, Jing Li, Debby Wu and Jenny Leonard contributed to this story.)
