TAIPEI, Taiwan (AFP) — Taiwan’s defense ministry said 37 Chinese aircraft were detected around the self-ruled island Wednesday as they headed to exercises with an aircraft carrier in the western Pacific.

China claims democratic Taiwan as part of its territory and maintains a near-daily presence of fighter jets, drones and warships around the island, which is located 180 kilometers from the southern Chinese coast.

It is also a crucial part of a chain of islands that military strategists say serve as a gateway from the South China Sea — which China claims in nearly its entirety — to the Pacific Ocean.

At around 9:30 a.m. Wednesday, Taipei said that “since 0520 today, the Ministry of National Defense detected a total of 37 Chinese aircraft” around Taiwan, including fighter jets, bombers and drones.

Thirty-six of the aircraft crossed the sensitive median line of the Taiwan Strait — which bisects the narrow waterway separating the island from China.

“(The aircraft) headed to the Western Pacific via our southern and southeastern airspace to cooperate with the aircraft carrier the Shandong in conducting ‘joint sea and air training,’” the defense ministry said in a statement.

Defense Minister Wellington Koo told reporters the Shandong “did not pass through the Bashi Channel,” the area off Taiwan’s southern tip where Chinese ships typically transit en route to the Pacific Ocean.

Instead, it “went further south through the Balingtang Channel towards the Western Pacific,” he said, referring to a waterway just north of the Philippines’ Babuyan Island — about 250 kilometers south of Bashi.