A high-ranking parliamentary delegation from Germany landed in Taiwan for a four day visit on Monday.
The team arrived as Taiwan’s Ministry of National Defense reported that Chinese warplanes had been detected in it’s airspace.
On Sunday, the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) announced that it had carried out military drills around Taiwan.
Chinese forces had organized “joint combat readiness patrols and actual combat drills” in the sea and airspace around Taiwan, read a statement from the PLA.
The Chinese military said its exercises were focused on land strikes and sea assaults.
Some 57 PLA aircraft and 4 PLA Naval vessels were detected around Taiwan, said a statement by Taiwan’s Defense Ministry. “28 of the detected aircraft had crossed the media line of the Taiwan Strait,” it said.
The aim of China’s exercise was to test joint combat abilities and “resolutely counter the provocative actions of external forces and Taiwan independence separatist forces,” said the People’s Liberation Army’s Eastern Theatre Command.
This is the second such exercise in less than a month when 43 Chinese aircraft crossed the Taiwan Strait’s median line, which is an unofficial buffer between the two regions.
Chair of Germany’s parliamentary defense committee, Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann, is leading the German delegation and said that the visit marked a “sign of solidarity” with Taiwan. Strack-Zimmermann added that the delegation will discuss the current “threat situation.”
German Education Minister Bettina Stark-Watzinger is also scheduled to visit Taipei in spring, which will be the first visit by a member of the German Cabinet in 26 years.
On Sunday, the neoliberal Free Democratic Party’s (FDP) Johannes Vogel tweeted a photo of himself and his FDP colleague Strack-Zimmermann on the flight to Taiwan.
Deputies from the FDP are set to meet with senior political, military and civil society figures in Taiwan.
Vogel warned that like Russian President Vladimir Putin, Chinese President Xi Jingping could also unleash a war.
“After Putin comes Xi,” he said. “We must take autocrats seriously and literally.”
China became Germany’s biggest trading partner in 2016.
Highlighting how Germany’s dependence on Russia for natural resources before the Ukraine invasion, Strack-Zimmermann warned that “it can only be to our disadvantage to make ourselves dependent economically on autocratic states.”
