The Chinese Army’s main and support aircraft crossed the midline of the Taiwan Strait and entered the self-proclaimed Taiwanese Air Defense Identification Zone on 3,764 occasions in 2025
Taiwan’s Defense Minister warned that repeating Chinese military exercises around the island risks numbing the population, but stressed that the threat is urgent and real.
In statements released by the Taiwanese news agency CNA, Wellington Koo Li-hsiung said that China frequently carries out “law enforcement patrols” near Taiwan’s outlying islands and around the Strait’s midline, with the intention of “creating the false appearance” that the Taiwan Strait is part of Chinese territorial waters.
Beijing’s forces also resort to threats in the field of cybersecurity, through “cyberattacks and intrusions” by hackers, combining political, economic, military and psychological instruments to carry out a “cognitive war” against Taiwan, said the minister.
“When these actions are repeated constantly, we worry that they may numb the population’s psychological defenses; in fact, this enemy threat is urgent and really exists,” said Wellington Koo.
According to statistics provided by Koo, the Chinese Army’s main and support aircraft crossed the midline of the Taiwan Strait and entered the self-proclaimed Taiwanese Air Defense Identification Zone on 3,764 occasions in 2025, up from 3,066 the previous year, representing an increase of about 23%.
Warships of various types also entered the same area on 2,640 occasions last year, compared to 2,475 in 2024, an increase of approximately 7%.
Taiwan’s Defense Minister stated that the production capacity associated with arms purchases from the United States has been “gradually recovering” and highlighted that Washington granted Taipei the same treatment as NATO Plus members, which will allow “to speed up administrative procedures and shorten notification deadlines to Congress”.
NATO Plus groups together the United States’ main allies outside the Atlantic Alliance, including Japan, Australia, South Korea, Israel and New Zealand.
If the Taiwanese Government’s general budget is approved without setbacks, Koo said, the M1A2T combat tanks could be delivered in full this year, while the HIMARS systems, the Harpoon missiles, the Switchblade 300 explosive munitions or the Altius 600 and MQ-9B drones could be received in batches throughout the current financial year.
The statements were released just two days after the presidents of the United States and China had a telephone conversation, in which Xi Jinping warned Donald Trump to handle arms sales to the self-governed island with “maximum caution.”
Taipei announced at the end of 2025 a special defense budget equivalent to 1.25 billion Taiwan dollars (around 33.4 billion euros) for the period 2026-2033, which would serve, in large part, to finance the acquisition of war material from the United States.
The budget remains blocked so far by the two main opposition parties, the Kuomintang and the Taiwan People’s Party, which hold a narrow majority of seats in parliament.
