China to launch rocket Thursday; will fly over Taiwan's ADIZ: MND

Taipei, July 31 (CNA) China will launch another rocket carrying a satellite that will likely fly over Taiwan's air defense identification zone (ADIZ) on Thursday, Taiwan's Ministry of National Defense (MND) said Wednesday.

It will be one of at least a dozen satellite launches by China in the past 18 months with a flight path over Taiwan or its ADIZ, none of which have so far threatened or hurt Taiwan's security because the rockets have left the Earth's atmosphere by the time they pass over Taiwan.

The MND has routinely made such launches public in advance since earlier this year, however, after it issued a controversial alert of a Chinese satellite launch just four days before Taiwan's presidential election.

In Wednesday's statement, the MND said the satellite will be launched from the Xichang Satellite Launch Center in China's Sichuan Province, citing an official announcement made by Chinese government.

According to the Chinese announcement, the rocket's flight path will head toward the Western Pacific and pass over Taiwan's ADIZ.

An ADIZ is a self-declared area in which a country claims the right to identify, locate and control approaching foreign aircraft but is not part of its territorial airspace as defined by international law.

Taiwan's military said it is now making public Chinese rocket launches to keep the public informed of such activities and other military movements by China in Taiwan's vicinity.

The last time MND made such an announcement on a scheduled rocket launch by China was on June 21 for a June 22 launch.

The routine announcements have come after the MND issued a blaring text alert to Taiwan residents' mobile phones on Jan. 9, 2024 for an event that was misidentified in English as a "missile flyover" rather than as a satellite launch.

Critics panned the alert as ill-advised and even politically motivated, saying that the military had not issued such an alert for any Chinese satellite launch previously and that it did so to simply scare people over the Chinese threat just days before the election.