China’s military and its aviation companies are the obvious winners in the conflict, which played well to domestic audiences on both sides of the Strait.
The News Lens
Date: 2018/02/28
By: Mark Wenyi Lai
Early morning on Jan. 4, China announced that it would begin using the new aviation
Photo Credit: Shih Wei Chan @Flickr CC BY-SA 2.0
route M503, connecting its most important economic hubs of Shanghai and Guangdong.
Later that day, the Taiwan government, citing national security, demanded China scrap the route, which it said was too close to the middle line of the Taiwan Strait. China refused to do so and Taiwan, in return, rejected more than 176 flight applications from Chinese airlines scheduled to bring Taiwanese back home during the Chinese New Year holiday. Various analyses from academics, news outlets and observers have offered explanations from political, security and international relations perspectives. This article however will look at the M503 aviation route incident from a structural point of view and offers an alternative way of understanding contemporary cross-Strait relations.
Cross-Strait relations hit a deadlock, as both sides wanted respect but weren’t willing to give it. [FULL STORY]
