Taiwan reports increased Chinese military drills nearby

Taiwan has reported renewed Chinese military activity including nine aircraft crossing the sensitive median line of the Taiwan Strait and warships carrying out "combat readiness patrols". Democratically governed Taiwan, which China claims as its own territory, has complained for the past four years of regular Chinese military patrols and drills near the island, as Beijing seeks to pressure Taipei over its sovereignty claims. With the Chinese president, Xi Jinping, in San Francisco last week for the Apec summit, where he met the US president, Joe Biden, such military activity around Taiwan had decreased. But Taiwan's defence ministry reported that starting…