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Comment by Rebelgecko | Hacker News Reader

Doesn't that happen on more or less a weekly basis?

Yes, why does it still happen on a weekly basis?

Why would it stop? Not sure how the Chinese military works, but presumably their pilots need a certain # of flight hours to stay current. It's not like there's really a downside for China

Every time they do this Taiwan has to scramble their own jets in the air. So most likely it is to test Taiwan's response times and wear out their aircrafts. Each flight of those fighter jets adds to a maintenance cost on top of the fuel costs, which is disproportionately higher for Taiwan considering the size of the economy.

Indeed it apparently costs close to 10% of their military budget just to respond to Chinese incursions. That's a heck of an incentive.

That makes sense. Most of China's military policy seems to be economic. They make cheap subs for defense. US buys really expensive subs so they can attack. They spend some money their military and all the countries around them spend more money on their military. The other countries get poorer since military investment returns nothing so they have to borrow from China for critical infrastructure.

Not really, it is well alleged that CCP has a lot of military spending off the books. So the % figure of GDP we see might be higher.

Also, China's posturing is not just defensive but has an offensive side as well, as seen by the naval bases it has been trying to build across the world, even in Africa.

China has 1 small Navy base in Africa. China is a long way away from having a blue water navy. There is a lot of fear mongering in the US from Admirals that want a bigger Navy. China has never conducted a Naval operation.

As of today, Beijing has just one overseas military base in Djibouti – a country which also hosts American, French, Italian and Japanese military bases, some of which also host British, German and Spanish troops. https://moderndiplomacy.eu/2020/08/31/chinas-overseas-milita...

>So most likely it is to test Taiwan's response times and wear out their aircrafts

Rings a bell, Russians were doing it on Baltic sea for over a decade, and president of Estonia was called paranoiac

Taiwan’s “Air Defense Identification Zone” extends over mainland China. Though it seems it mostly cares about incursions in the southwest corner. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_defense_identification_zon...

Because their airspace extends over mainland china...

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