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The Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) reportedly dispatched 30 warplanes to the vicinity of the island of Taiwan on Monday, the same day a US senator arrived on the island for a surprise visit, and also at the same time the US Navy was holding dual carrier drills not far away from the region, Global Times reported.

With most of the aircraft involved being fighter jets, the PLA practiced the seizure of air superiority and aerial strikes in a simulation of reunification-by-force, thus warning the parties involved in the US-Taiwan collusion that the PLA has the capacity to launch a lightning-quick assault that would end the Taiwan question once and for all when necessary, experts said on Tuesday.

The 30 PLA warplanes featured in the mission were two KJ-500 early warning aircraft, four Y-8 electronic intelligence aircraft, a Y-8 electronic warfare aircraft, a Y-8 anti-submarine warfare aircraft, six J-16 fighter jets, eight J-11 fighter jets, four J-10 fighter jets, two Su-35 fighter jets and two Su-30 fighter jets. The aircraft entered Taiwan’s self-proclaimed southwest air defense identification zone between the Dongsha Islands and the Taiwan island on Monday, said Taiwan’s defense authority on Monday.@, according to Global Times.

This was the second largest PLA aircraft activity in 2022, after 39 sorties on January 23. It also marked the first time in a long period that the PLA Air Force’s Su-35 has made a public reappearance, observers said.

On the same day, US Senator Tammy Duckworth and her delegation arrived on the island of Taiwan for a surprise three-day visit, media on the island reported. Duckworth is reportedly scheduled to meet with Taiwan’s regional leader Tsai Ing-wen and others on Tuesday.

The PLA warplane activities also came shortly after two US aircraft carriers, the USS Abraham Lincoln and the USS Ronald Reagan, reportedly held drills on Saturday and Sunday in waters to the southeast of Okinawa, a strategic location analysts said is a main maritime battlefield if the US militarily intervenes in a possible conflict across the Taiwan Straits.

While the PLA aircraft sorties are part of the regular drills, they are also pointed at Taiwan secessionists and external interference forces like the US, analysts said.

Most of the PLA warplanes dispatched in the drills were fighter jets, and the rest were special-mission aircraft. This means the PLA likely rehearsed the seizure of air superiority from the island’s air force and the US carrier-borne aviation force, a Beijing-based military expert told the Global Times on Tuesday, requesting anonymity, Global Times reported.

Some of the fighter jets tend to being pure air superiority fighters, like the J-11 and the Su-35, while some others tend to being more of a multi-role type that can also launch attacks on ground and maritime targets, like the J-16 and the Su-30, the expert said. The expert noted that the special-mission aircraft can provide command and control as well as intelligence and electronic warfare support.

All types of aircraft will join combat, and that is why they all need to train in drills, the expert said.

It is possible that Taiwan’s defense authority failed to identify all PLA aircraft under strong electronic interference or because of stealth capabilities from warplanes like the J-20, observers said.

Flight data released by Taiwan showed that the PLA likely practiced several waves of non-stop aerial strikes, Zheng Jian, director of the National Taiwan Studies Association and chair professor at the Taiwan Research Institute of Xiamen University, told the Global Times on Tuesday.

Drills like this tell the island that when the PLA makes a real move, it will likely be a sudden attack that can put an end to the Taiwan question once and for all, Zheng said. If and when that happens, there would be even more warplanes, in addition to forces on the ground, at sea and in cyberspace, he said, according to Global Times.

The PLA staged in May at least two more large-scale drills around the island of Taiwan targeting collusive US-Taiwan activities, according to official announcements made by the PLA.

Lawmakers taking part in the general deliberations on the annual estimate of income and expenditure (budget) for fiscal year 2022-23 in a session of the National Assembly today insisted on an objective analysis of the budget.

Jitendra Narayan Dev of the Nepali Congress said the budget should not be criticized for the sake of criticism alone. He insisted on developing a culture of calling a spade a spade while commenting on the budget.

He argued that there is interrelation between the principles, policies and programmes of the government and the budget. The budget emphasizes on attracting the foreign direct investment, defining the private sector as the engine of development and on research and innovation.

CPN (Unified Socialist)'s Dr Beduram Bhusal said the first budget of the coalition government is better than the budgets of the past few years. The budget talks about transformation of agriculture and bringing about economic transformation through cooperatives, private and public sectors, he pointed out. 

CPN (Maoist Center)'s Ganga Kumari Belbase opined that the slogan of economic stability, promotion of entrepreneurship and inclusive development contained in the budget were relevant ones. "It is a positive aspect of the budget that it has laid emphasis on making the country self-sufficient in agriculture by facilitating irrigation, fertilizer and seed to farmers," she added.

Besides, the budget has incentivized small, cottage and big industries and it should not be criticized for the sake of it.

CPN (UML) lawmaker Devendra Dahal said the government should not include 'unfeasible' programmes in the budget as the coming year is the election year and there is risk of an economic crisis. 

Pramila Kumari, Shekhar Kumar Singh, Tula Kumar Bishwokarma, Sumitra BC, Nara Bahadur Bista, Ram Chandra Rai, Jaga Prasad Sharma, Bhagawati Neupane, Maya Prasad Sharma, Bina Pokhrel and Narayan Dutta Mishra, among the lawmakers also put their views on several aspects of the budget.

Opposition parties have criticized the government’s estimate of income and expenditure for the upcoming fiscal year 2022-23 as they termed it guided by a distributive approach. 

Taking part in the deliberations on the budget during a session of the House of Representatives (HoR) today, CPN-UML lawmaker Bhanu Bhakta Dhakal said the allocation of budget to respond the issues of landless people was positive, but it was focused on election and guided by the distributive mindset.  

Hridayesh Tripathi from the same party questioned the government to further clarify its plan to provide a contribution-based pension. As he assessed, farmers would not be directly beneficial from the announcement for increasing investment in agriculture.  

Rajendra Lingden of Rastriya Prajatantra Party said that the budget seemed not capable of intervening in a rising market price.  As he claimed, “The budget focused on elections and the distribution will not bring a substantive change in people’s life.”

Questioning the sources of income, he said the budget based on foreign aid and loans lacked a ground for implementation.   

Meanwhile, Rastriya Janamorcha’s Durga Poudel was of the opinion that just distribution of land was the requirement to promote agricultural production.  She pressed for national independence, sovereignty and interest while accepting foreign aid.  

As the lawmaker stressed, the government should take measures for protecting domestic industries. Drawing the government’s attention toward no allocation of specific budget for combating increasing violence against women, she demanded the government bear responsibility of livelihood of rape survivors.

The Chinese military has said it conducted a “combat readiness patrol” in the sea and airspace around the self-ruled island of Taiwan, which China claims as its own territory, Aljazeera reported.

In a statement, the People’s Liberation Army Eastern Theatre Command said the exercises had taken place in recent days and were “a necessary action” against what it described as “US-Taiwan collusion”.

“Recently, the United States has frequently made moves on the Taiwan issue, saying one thing and doing another, instigating support for Taiwan independence forces, which will push Taiwan into a dangerous situation,” the command added in a statement on Wednesday.

Taiwan this week reported the largest incursion by Chinese aircraft into its Air Defence Identification Zone (ADIZ) since January with 30 planes, most of them fighter jets, entering the southwest of the ADIZ.

The incident took place as Tammy Duckworth, a US Senator, was visiting the island, according to Aljazeera.

Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian said that Beijing had “lodged solemn representations” with the US about her visit.

“We urge relevant US politicians to earnestly abide by the one-China principle, and immediately stop official exchanges with Taiwan in any form and refrain from sending any wrong signals to the ‘Taiwan independence’ separatist forces,” Zhao told a press briefing on Tuesday afternoon, according to the state-run Global Times.

“China will continue to take forceful measures to resolutely safeguard China’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.”

Zhu Fenglian, spokesperson for the Taiwan Affairs Office of the State Council, a Beijing body, also warned in a press conference that it was “very dangerous” for the US to “connive in the separatist activities conducted by Taiwan secessionists”.

Known formally as the Republic of China (ROC), Taiwan lies about 161 kilometres (100 miles) off the coast of mainland China. Once colonised by Japan, Chinese nationalists fled to the island after losing the civil war to the communists who established the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in Beijing, Aljazeera reported.

The ROC continued to claim to represent all of China and even had a seat on the United Nations Security Council until 1971 when most countries, including the US, began to switch diplomatic recognition to Beijing instead of Taipei.

Since then, the US, under the Taiwan Relations Act, has been mandated to “preserve and promote extensive, close and friendly commercial, cultural, and other relations between the people of the United States and the people of Taiwan”.

Washington also takes a more ambiguous view of “One China”.

For Beijing, “One China” is the pretext for its claim that Taiwan is simply a province of the mainland and not an independent state.

For the US, however, Taiwan’s status remains undetermined, according to Aljazeera.