The People’s Liberation Army (PLA, the Chinese army) began two days of large-scale military maneuvers around Taiwan on Monday, involving a coordinated deployment of land, naval, air and missile forces. The new ones war gameswhich will include live-fire tests, occur in a context of growing tension between China and the United States, after Washington advanced the procedures to sell the , but also in the midst of statements by Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi, in which she suggested that a hypothetical Chinese attack against Taiwanese territory could force her country to intervene militarily.
Beijing has presented the operation named Justice Mission 2025 as “legitimate and necessary” to safeguard “China’s sovereignty and national unity,” and has explicitly framed it as a “serious warning” to “separatist forces seeking the island’s independence and external interfering forces.”
The spokesman for the PLA Eastern Theater Command, Colonel Shi Yi, reported early that Chinese ships and aircraft were approaching Taiwan “from multiple directions.” Shi added that the tests would include “combat readiness” patrols in the air and sea, the “blockade of ports and areas considered strategic” and “deterrence operations” beyond the immediate perimeter of the target, which in Chinese military jargon refers to the first chain of islands, a geographical arc that runs from the Japanese archipelago to the Philippines, passing through Taiwan.
Beijing considers that island belt as the first line of containment of the military deployment of the United States and its allies in the Pacific. Including for the first time a reference to “deterrence” suggests that these exercises contemplate broader military projection scenarios, aimed at hindering or preventing an eventual external intervention in the event that a real conflict occurs in the Strait of Formosa.
The war trials are taking place in the waters of the strait and in five maritime and air spaces located to the north, southwest, southeast and east of the main island and tomorrow they will include live fire. Colonel Shi stressed that different military branches will carry out coordinated actions to test the “real combined combat capability” of the troops. Throughout the day, attacks against mobile land and water targets and the hunt for submarines have been simulated. For this, fighters, bombers, drones, long-range artillery, destroyers, frigates, ships and war aircraft have been used.
The Taiwanese Ministry of Defense has condemned Beijing’s “irrational provocations” and has reported that it has deployed “appropriate” forces in accordance with existing defense protocols to protect Taiwanese “freedom, democracy and sovereignty.”
It is the place where nationalist forces were exiled after losing the Chinese civil war in 1949. Although the Communist Party has never exercised effective authority over the island, the People’s Republic considers it an inalienable part of its territory and claims that . “The return of Taiwan to China is an integral part of the postwar international order,” Chinese President Xi Jinping remarked to his American counterpart, Donald Trump, in November. , he added then.
Although the ancient island of Formosa functions as a State in fact —it has a democratically elected Government since 1996, a Constitution and an Army—, the majority of the international community (including the United States) does not recognize it as a sovereign country. However, Washington supplies him with weapons, and rejects any change in the the state in which in the Strait by force or coercion.
“Defending democracy and freedom is not a provocation,” the Taiwanese Ministry of Defense emphasized in a press release. Taipei has described the Chinese maneuvers as actions that confirm “the aggressive nature” of Beijing and its role as “the greatest destabilizer of regional peace.” And he has insisted that they reaffirm the need to strengthen the island’s defensive capacity.
The military exercises occur 11 days after Donald Trump’s Administration approved measures to strengthen security cooperation with Taipei and advanced new procedures for the sale of weapons, valued at 11.1 billion dollars (about 9.428 million euros). That operation, which has yet to complete its processing in the US Congress, would constitute the largest military supply agreement to Taiwan to date. On Friday, Beijing responded with sanctions against 20 American companies in the defense sector and ten of their managers.
Chinese military maneuvers around Taiwan are becoming more frequent. They are after the visit to Taipei of the then president of the US House of Representatives, Democrat Nancy Pelosi. Beijing has intensified its military pressure since (which China calls “secessionist”), in May 2024. Various US analysts and military personnel have been warning for some time that Chinese tests could serve as a pretext to cover up an invasion.
an online account linked to the Chinese Army’s press center, General Meng Xiangqing states that the Chinese Armed Forces have “multiple strategic options” to “punish pro-independence forces” and “deter.” “[El EPL] ”, assured the general.
The director of Taiwan’s National Security Bureau, Tsai Ming-yen, warned in early December that the PLA could intensify its military activity around the island before the end of the year. That notice occurred in parallel with an increase in tension between China and Japan, after the premier Japan said in November that a could pose “an existential threat” to its country, which would justify the deployment of the Japanese Self-Defense Forces.
The comment from and a faithful defender of a more militarized Japan, represented a distancing from the strategy of ambiguity that Tokyo has maintained for years and has caused the bilateral relationship to be in free fall. Beijing froze several official dialogue channels, asked its citizens to avoid traveling or studying in the neighboring country and.
The EPL has also released two posters with a strong symbolic meaning today. The first, titled Shield of justice: dismantling illusionsshows two large shields (engraved with the Great Wall of China) “nailed” in the sea and “blocking” key access routes to the island. The illustration shows cargo ships carrying weapons and American planes being intercepted and forced to turn back. The second, Arrows of justice: control and denialshows Taiwan as a target, upon which flaming arrows fall. Some pass through green insects, a reference to the Taiwanese president, whom Chinese propaganda frequently refers to as a “parasite.”
“Any foreign interference that touches the shield will perish! Any separatist scoundrel that encounters the shield will be destroyed!” claims the information accompanying the posters.
