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		</div><p>The US has approved the sale of an anti-tank mine-laying system to Taiwan amid the rising military threat from China.</p>
<p>The state department on Wednesday said the Volcano system and all related equipment would cost an estimated $180 million.</p>
<p>It is capable of scattering anti-tank and anti-personnel mines from either a ground vehicle or helicopter.</p>
<p>The announcement indicated Taiwan would be buying the vehicle-borne version, the kind of general-use weapon many experts believe Taiwan needs more of to dissuade or repel a potential Chinese invasion.</p>
<p>To advertise that threat, China’s military sent 71 planes and seven ships towards Taiwan in a 24-hour display of force directed at the self-ruled island it claims is its own territory, Taiwan’s defence ministry said on Monday.</p>
<p>China’s military harassment of Taiwan has intensified in recent years, along with rhetoric from top leaders that the island has no choice but to accept eventual Chinese rule.</p>
<p>That has seen the ruling Communist Party’s increasingly powerful military wing, the People’s Liberation Army, send planes or ships towards the island on a near-daily basis.</p>
<p>Between 6am Sunday and 6am Monday, 47 of the Chinese planes crossed the median line of the 100-mile Taiwan Strait, an unofficial boundary once tacitly accepted by both sides, according to the defence ministry.</p>
<p>It came after China expressed anger at Taiwan-related provisions in a US annual defence spending bill in what has come to be a standard Chinese practice.</p>
<p>China also conducted large-scale live-fire military exercises in August in response to US house speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan.</p>
<p>Beijing views visits from foreign governments to the island as de facto recognition of Taiwan as independent and a challenge to China’s claim of sovereignty.</p>
<p>The PLA would continue to launch such missions until Taiwan’s pro-independence Democratic Progressive Party ceases “constantly provoking confrontation and enmity between the two sides”, Chinese defence ministry spokesman Tan Kefei said at a monthly briefing on Thursday.</p>
<p>“The PLA always … resolutely defends national sovereignty and territorial integrity,” Mr Tan said.</p>
<p>In its announcement, the state department said the Volcano sale “serves US national, economic, and security interests by supporting the recipient’s continuing efforts to modernise its armed forces and to maintain a credible defensive capability”.</p>
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