Soldiers on Kinmen, a Taiwanese-controlled island just off the Chinese city of Xiamen, shot at a Chinese drone for the first time on Tuesday afternoon.
“According to procedure, we warn, report, try to expel with measures such as flares, and if that fails, we fire shots,” said Major General Chang Jung-shun, spokesman for the command.
The more assertive approach comes as Taipei seeks to balance the risk of sparking outright conflict against its desire to block China from demonstrating effective control over nearby waters and airspace or even Taiwanese territory.
“Such activities are presumably all part of Chinese grey-zone tactics to wear down Taiwan’s military,” said Franz-Stefan Gady, a senior fellow at the International Institute for Strategic Studies think-tank.
Taiwan has complained of Chinese drones repeatedly flying close to small groups of islands it controls near China’s coast as part of military drills by Beijing, most recently by the Kinmen islands.
China has conducted exercises around Taiwan after U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi visited the island this month against Beijing’s wishes.
Kinmen defense command spokesman Chang Jung-shun said the live rounds were fired at the drone which had approached Erdan islet just before 6 p.m. local time (1000 GMT), with flares being used previously. The drone then flew off back to China, he said.
There was no immediate response from China. On Monday, the Chinese Foreign Ministry had dismissed Taiwan’s complaints about the drones as nothing “to make a fuss about”
White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby would not confirm reports about the drones but told reporters that China continued to try to set a “new normal” for its activity toward Taiwan, including by sailing ships and flying aircraft over the unofficial median line in the Taiwan Strait.
“They’re trying to turn up the temperature to a degree where it becomes sort of this new normal,” Kirby said. “We’re not going to accept it.”
Two U.S. Navy warships sailed through international waters in the Taiwan Strait on Sunday, the first such operation since Pelosi’s visit, though it has been conducting similar passages on a monthly basis.
Political | Process 
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