China flew 39 warplanes toward Taiwan on Sunday night which included 24 J-16 fighter jets and 10 J-10 jets, among other support aircraft and electronic warfare aircraft, according to Taiwan's defense ministry.

In a response, Taiwan's air force scrambled its own jets and tracked the People's Liberation Army planes on its air defense radar systems, the defense ministry said.

Chinese pilots have been flying towards Taiwan on a near-daily basis in the past year and a half since Taiwan's government started publishing the data regularly. The largest sortie was 56 warplanes on a single day last October.

The activity has generally been in the air space southwest of Taiwan and falls into what Taiwan's military calls the air defense identification zone or air space which it monitors out of national security considerations.

Tensions have been high since Taiwanese citizens elected Tsai Ing-wen as president in 2016, to which Beijing responded by cutting off previously established communications with the island's government.

Tsai's predecessor was friendly to China and had endorsed Beijing's claim that the two are part of a single Chinese nation.

Image credit: AP