Taiwan readies military planes as tensions grow with Beijing

Taiwan is prepared to use military transport planes to fly Taiwanese citizens based in mainland China back to the island for the Lunar New Year holiday next month, a senior official said Monday, amid a row between Beijing and Taipei over air routes. The comments came amid increasingly tense relations between mainland China and Taiwan, which Beijing considers a breakaway Chinese province. Taipei is angry over Beijing’s decision to open new flight routes close to the island without its permission. Ties were further strained on Monday with mainland Chinese media reporting that two citizens had been arrested for allegedly spying for Taiwan. Prosecutors in Jiangsu province said two mainlanders, Ma Liangliang and Liang Xin, passed information on paramilitary training and military weapons testing to Taiwan in July 2016, Shanghai-based news website Thepaper.cn reported. Taiwan has refused permission for China Eastern Airlines and Xiamen Air to fly 176 extra cross-strait flights during the holiday period between February 15 and February 20 in the wake of the flight routes spat. Chen Chin-sheng, director general of Taiwan’s navigation and aviation department, said the self-ruled island was ready to deploy military planes to pick up citizens from Taiwan-controlled Quemoy island if – in a worst-case scenario – they could not get flights back to Taiwan for the holiday. “We have encouraged [Taiwanese] passengers to change their flights to other airlines, or to return to Taiwan by way of Hong Kong or Macau,” Chen said on Monday. “In the worst-case scenario, we will have military planes ready in Quemoy and mainland-based businessmen can return from Xiamen [by boat] to Quemoy where they can take either civilian or military planes back to Taiwan proper.”<br/>