The entry of Chinese drones into Taiwanese airspace has become quite a common phenomenon in the last few months. However, not all of them belong to the military as the Chinese social media is filled with videos of civilians flying their drones near the Kinmen Islands and it has led to a situation that experts are calling “deniable harassment”. While Taiwan has decided to take a stricter approach towards the incursions, China continues to call it “no big deal” reinforcing the claim on the island nation.
Paul Huang, a research fellow at the Taiwanese Public Opinion Foundation – a government think tank in China, told CNN that he believes most drones are actually controlled by civilians.
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“Flying that close to a Taiwanese military guard post and catching their attention …That’s not really the way any military would deploy or utilize their drones. And frankly, I don’t see any good reason that the (People’s Liberation Army) would even attempt something like that,” Huang said.
The tensions between the two countries flared once again when United States House Speaker Nancy Pelosi visited Taiwan and said that the United States will help them. Since then, the military drills have increased and Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen called the drones China’s “gray-zone” warfare tactics.
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However, the increase in civilian drones has made life difficult for the Taiwanese forces. The common design of drones may it difficult to understand whether they are being controlled by actual civilians or the military. As a result, they have to use a lot of resources to track and shoot down most of them.
On the other hand, the experts in Taiwan believe that this is just another tactic from China to continuously bother the forces near the border and claim victory in a so-called “propaganda war”.
