Taiwan announced that it had discovered 16 Chinese warships on the third day of the deployment of Chinese military forces around the island, AFP reported, citing BTA.
The warships, along with 34 Chinese aircraft, have been spotted near Taiwan in the past 24 hours, according to a daily tally by Taiwan's Defense Ministry.
China is carrying out its biggest military deployment in years from Japan's southern islands to the South China Sea, Taipei said this week, accusing Beijing of "disturbing the tranquility". Yesterday, a representative of Taiwan's security forces announced that about 90 warships are participating in the Chinese exercises.
China views Taiwan as a province that it has not yet succeeded in reunifying with the rest of its territory since the end of the Chinese Civil War in 1949, and does not rule out the use of force to achieve this goal.
At the same time, Reuters reported that Lin Fei-fan and Su Hsu-chien, deputy secretaries-general of Taiwan's National Security Council, as well as several of their officials, visited Washington this week for meetings with officials with the transition team of the newly elected US President Donald Trump. The agency emphasizes that it has not been able to clarify who on the American side will join the meetings or the agenda.