AP News, May 15th, 2007
Six Taiwanese jet fighters touched down on a highway in central Taiwan Tuesday, as the island responded to a simulated attack from rival China at the start of three days of extensive war games.
This year's annual Hankuang (Chinese Glory) military exercises come with President Chen Shui-bian entering the last year of his eight-year presidency and tensions between Beijing and Taipei on a relatively low burner.
The two sides split amid civil war in 1949, and China insists it will use force if the democratic island moves to formalize its de facto independence.
But with Chen set to leave office in May 2008, and his independence-leaning Democratic Progressive Party lagging in the race to replace him, tensions between Taiwan and China have eased noticeably.
In Tuesday's exercises, Taiwanese Mirages, F-16s and Indigenous Defense Fighters swooped down onto a highway in Changhua county, had their fuel tanks and missile pods topped off by air force personnel, and took off to face another wave of imagined Chinese attackers.
In other action Tuesday, Taiwanese artillery batteries on the offshore island of Penghu fired volley after volley of shells at "Chinese" naval vessels approaching the area from the west.
Thick plumes of smoke rose in the air as the volleys hit their mark.
The Hankuang exercises reflect rising Taiwanese fears over an intensive Chinese military buildup aimed primarily at the island of 23 million people.
Over the past decade sophisticated Russian aircraft and other weapons systems have been successfully integrated into the Chinese inventory, and more than 800 Chinese missiles have been aimed at key Taiwanese military and civilian targets across the 100-mile-wide Taiwan Strait.
