The Defense Ministry said that the PLA Air Force planes were a mix of fighter jets, early warning and control aircraft, electronic warfare aircraft, anti-submarine aircraft, electronic intelligence aircraft, and aerial refueling aircraft.
It was the third-highest daily number of Chinese jets entering Taiwan's ADIZ since the beginning of the year, and comes less than a month after China sent 30 warplanes on a similar mission.
In response, the Taiwanese military scrambled combat aircraft to warn the Chinese jets away, deployed air defense missile systems to monitor the activities, and issued radio warnings and deployed air defense missile systems, according to the Defense Ministry.
Taiwan and mainland China have been governed separately since the defeated nationalists retreated to the island at the end of the Chinese civil war more than 70 years ago.
But China's ruling Chinese Communist Party CCP views the self-ruled island as part of its territory despite having never controlled it. Beijing has not ruled out military force to take Taiwan and has kept pressure on the democratic island over the past few years with frequent warplane flights into the ADIZ. An ADIZ is imposed unilaterally and separate from sovereign airspace, which is defined under international law as extending 12 nautical miles from a territory's shoreline. The US Federal Aviation Administration defines it as a designated area of airspace over land or water in which a country requires immediate and positive identification, location and air traffic control of aircraft in the interest of the country's national security. The issue of Taiwan has been the subject of US-China relations in recent months. Tensions between Washington, which is committed to supporting the island's self-defense, and Beijing over Taiwan dominate headlines earlier this month as their respective defense ministers met at the Shangri-La Dialogue defense conference in Singapore. What are the facts about China-Taiwan tensions In a keynote speech in Singapore, Chinese Defense Minister Wei Fenghe accused the United States of being a bully in the region and pledged that the PLA would fight to the end of Taiwanese independence. After the Shangri-La conference, China's Foreign Ministry reasserted earlier statements that the Taiwan Strait is not international waters. The waters of the Taiwan Strait extend from the coasts on both sides of the Strait to the centerline of the Strait, and are China's internal waters, territorial sea, contiguous zone and exclusive economic zone in that order, Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin said in a briefing on June 13, citing the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea and China's domestic law. Related video: See China launch its most advanced aircraft carrier See China launch its most advanced aircraft carrier Reiterating Beijing's position on Wednesday, an editorial in China's state-owned tabloid Global Times claimed that the entire Taiwan Strait is not international waters, but rather is completely under Beijing's jurisdiction. The Global Times said that the actions of US and foreign warships that regularly pass through the strait constitute provocations that violate Chinese sovereignty and are not innocent passage. The US Navy sends warships through the strait, including May 10, when the US Navy's guided missile cruiser USS Port Royal made a transit. International law stipulates that a country's territorial waters extend 12 nautical miles from its coastline.