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Taiwan Says Chinese Warplanes Are Crossing a Median Line, But Is There a
Median Line?

Ralph Jennings

   TAIPEI - A median line cited by Taiwan's military,when it wards off
   Chinese fighter jets,has never become a formal agreement,giving the
   Chinese side license to cross it without violating any agreement,
   analysts in Taipei say.

   The line, which runs northeast from near Japan's outlying islands to
   the southwest near Hong Kong along the middle of the Taiwan Strait,
   "has just one definition", a Taiwan Ministry of National Defense source
   said Monday, referencing a mid-2019 report by the government-funded
   Central News Agency. A former defense minister detailed the line's
   exact latitudes and longitude coordinates during a legislative hearing
   in 2004, the report says.

   A Chinese foreign ministry spokesman said in September the line doesn't
   exist. Experts in Taiwan say the line, established during the Cold War
   with U.S. help, never reached the status of a formal agreement.

   "It's not to say that some previous deal is being violated against
   Taiwan, because actually no third party was ever in the middle, nor did
   any two parties sign a legally binding agreement," said Huang
   Chung-ting, assistant research fellow with the Institute for National
   Defense and Security Research in Taipei. "It's just an understanding
   based on politics."

   Validity of the line, which is in place to head off mishaps, has become
   a sore point this year as Chinese warplanes regularly cross it, often
   to be scrambled away by Taiwanese planes. As of October 7, Chinese
   military aircraft had flown 49 times across the median line in 2020,
   the highest number in any year since 1990.

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