Taiwan has grown accustomed to a near daily drumbeat of Chinese military planes flying close by, part of Beijing’s campaign to pressure the island it claims as its own. But lately, Taiwan has been facing an unexpected puzzle: Where have the planes gone?
For 12 of the past 13 days, no Chinese military flights were recorded near Taiwan. The sole exception was Sunday when two planes were seen approaching the island, according to daily data released by Taiwan’s Ministry of National Defense.
“It is such a stark change from established behavior,” Ben Lewis, the founder of PLATracker, a website that collates the data from the Taiwanese defense ministry.
“This gap in activity is the longest we have seen since 2021,” Mr. Lewis said. That year, there was a three-week stretch that saw only five flights in total, and part of that time coincided with a tropical storm that churned around Taiwan. This time, the weather has been stable.
Lulls in the number of People’s Liberation Army military flights are not new, including during China’s weeklong annual legislative session, which ends on Thursday. But in the past, there was still usually a smattering of flights at that time of year, according to the PLATracker. The fall was all the more striking against the buildup of Chinese military flights over recent years, Mr. Lewis said. Taiwan recorded about 10 Chinese military flights a day on average last year, and on some days the number went up to dozens.
Analysts have offered several possible explanations, including that China may be setting the stage for President Trump’s planned summit with President Xi Jinping. China may also be trying to conserve fuel as oil prices rise because of the U.S.-Israeli war against Iran.
Many experts pushed back on speculation that Beijing is deliberately reducing tensions as a prelude to military action.
China’s Ministry of National Defense has not commented on the falloff. Taiwan’s defense minister, Wellington Koo, cautioned last week against reading the decline as a Chinese retreat from military threats against Taiwan.
“We can’t simply look at whether the fighter aircraft are coming,” Mr. Koo told reporters in Taipei. “We need to look at a range of indicators.”
Notably, the Chinese navy has not pulled back.
“We haven’t seen a comparable decrease in the reported number of P.L.A. naval vessels around Taiwan,” said Brian Hart, an expert in Washington, referring to the People’s Liberation Army. “The dip seems to be isolated to air activity.”
“Given the timing and the number of potential factors at play, it’s hard to say what exactly is shaping this behavior right now,” said Mr. Hart, who is the deputy director of the China Power Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
He and other experts, as well as Taiwanese officials, will be watching to see whether the flights increase after China’s legislative session.
Some analysts also said that Mr. Xi may be dialing back the flights ahead of the meeting with Mr. Trump in Beijing, which is scheduled for early April, to bolster his argument that it is Taiwan, and not China, that is provoking tensions between the sides.
Beijing has cast President Lai Ching-te of Taiwan as a dangerous separatist bent on rejecting the prospect of unification, and risking war. Many Taiwanese and many Western governments see China as being the aggressor, including through military exercises that simulate an invasion or blockage of the island.
Given that Mr. Trump’s administration is already engaged in war with Iran, “I think that Xi doesn’t want Trump to think that Beijing is adding to the trouble,” said Ou Hsi-fu, a deputy chief executive officer at the Institute for National Defense and Security Research, a body in Taipei that receives funds from Taiwan’s government.
“Beijing wants the Xi-Trump summit to go ahead smoothly, maintaining China’s image as a great power on equal footing with the United States,” Mr. Ou said.
The military flights are the mostly widely noted public measure of Chinese military pressure on Taiwan; they have increased since 2020, accelerating after Nancy Pelosi, then the speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, visited Taipei in 2022. China retaliated against that visit by flying jets, sailing ships and even firing missiles around the island.
Some experts believe that the current reduction in flights may reflect disruption caused by the official purges in the Chinese air force, including in the Eastern Theater Command, the region of the Chinese military that oversees Taiwan. The Chinese armed forces have been shaken by widespread purges of generals and other top leaders.
Another possible factor may simply be that the air force is intentionally altering its training routines, said K. Tristan Tang, a nonresident fellow at the National Bureau of Asian Research.
“What we are seeing now has actually been developing for more than half a year,” Mr. Tang said, citing a recent pattern of more days without flights compared to the previous year. “The difference is that the decline has become much more noticeable recently.”
Amy Chang Chien contributed reporting.
Chris Buckley, the chief China correspondent for The Times, reports on China and Taiwan from Taipei, focused on politics, social change and security and military issues.
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