Daily Mail
Date: 6 October 2020
By: AFP
Authoritarian China views democratic Taiwan as its own territory and has vowed to one day seize it, by force if necessary, even though the island has been self-ruled for the last seven decades.
Taipei's fighters have taken to the skies to ward off Chinese warplanes more than 4,100 times so far this year, making about 22 sorties a day on average, according to the military — 129 percent up on all of 2019.
Naval ships have been dispatched more than 7,500 times, compared with fewer than 6,000 for all of last year, according to a defence ministry report submitted to parliament.