On Tuesday (Aug 30), Taiwan fired warning shots at a Chinese drone that buzzed an offshore islet, soon after President Tsai Ing-wen said she had instructed Taiwan's military to take "strong countermeasures" against what she called Chinese provocations.

It was the first time that such cautionary shots had been fired during a time when tensions between China and Taiwan were at an all-time high. Taiwan vehemently rejects China's claims of sovereignty while Beijing sees the island as its own. After the shots were fired, the drone returned to China, according to a military spokesperson.

As part of military drills by Beijing, Taiwan has repeatedly protested against Chinese drones flying close to small groupings of islands it controls along the Chinese coast, most notably the Kinmen islands.

After U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi visited the island this month against Beijing's desires, China conducted drills surrounding Taiwan.

According to Chang Jung-shun, a spokesman for the Kinmen Defense Command, live shots were fired at the drone after it approached Erdan islet just before 6 o'clock local time. Flares had previously been fired. He claimed that after that, the drone returned to China.

The Chinese government didn't respond right away. Taiwan's protests concerning the drones had been disregarded by the Chinese Foreign Ministry on Monday as unimportant and undeserving of making a fuss.

Under the condition of anonymity, US sources claimed it seemed like China was deploying drones to harass the Taiwanese rather than make things better. On Chinese social media, footage from at least two drone missions showing Taiwanese soldiers at their stations and, in one instance, hurling rocks at a drone, has gone viral.

Tsai criticized China earlier on Tuesday when touring the military forces on the Penghu islands for its use of drones and other forms of "grey zone" warfare. She didn't go into detail about the defense ministry's response she had ordered.

"I want to tell everyone that the more the enemy provokes, the more calm we must be," Tsai told naval officers. "We will not provoke disputes, and we will exercise self-restraint, but it does not mean that we will not counter."

At their closest point, the Kinmen islands are only a few hundred meters away from Chinese soil, directly across from the Chinese cities of Xiamen and Quanzhou.

Officers said reporters traveling with Tsai that since China started its exercises this month, warships and fighter jets based at Penghu, which is located in the Taiwan Strait closer to Taiwan than China, have been leaving loaded with live ammunition but have not yet opened fire.