A mainland Chinese surveillance drone operated by the People's Liberation Army flew into airspace within 12 nautical miles of Dongsha (Pratas) Island on January 21, prompting protest from Taiwan's defence authorities and a terse rebuttal from Beijing. At a routine press briefing the Mainland Affairs Office spokesman Peng Qing'en said the Southern Theatre Command had organised the unmanned aircraft for routine flight training near "China's Dongsha Island," and described the operation as entirely lawful and legitimate.
Taipei's defence ministry had earlier called the flight "highly provocative" and irresponsible, saying it damaged regional peace and violated international norms. Beijing blamed the Democratic Progressive Party government in Taiwan for persisting in a pro-independence line and labelled Taipei the real provocateur, framing the episode as another example of the DPP's destabilising behaviour.
The incident is sensitive because 12 nautical miles is the commonly recognised limit of a coastal state's territorial sea under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, making any air or surface operation inside that band particularly politicised. Dongsha is administered by Taiwan but claimed by the People's Republic of China, and the island sits on the northern edge of the contested South China Sea — a maritime space where sovereignty, strategic access and military signalling overlap.
Operationally the episode reflects two clear trends: the increasing use of unmanned systems by the PLA to maintain persistent presence without the higher risk of manned sorties, and Beijing's preference for normalising such operations to reinforce its sovereignty claims. Drones allow the Southern Theatre Command to probe defences, gather intelligence and impose low-cost facts on the ground — or in this case, the air — while keeping escalation thresholds ambiguous.
Regionally the flight will be watched closely by Washington and other Asian capitals that worry about the erosion of established norms around territorial airspace and freedom of navigation. For Taipei, even routine-seeming missions by mainland unmanned platforms complicate defence planning and domestic politics, strengthening calls for enhanced air-defence measures and closer security cooperation with partners.
Expect more of these grey-zone manoeuvres in the near term as Beijing calibrates pressure on Taipei while avoiding direct clashes. The immediate risk is not large-scale conflict but an accumulation of incidents that raise the chances of miscalculation, diplomatic friction and tighter military postures across the Taiwan Strait and in adjacent waters.