NEW TAIPEI CITY, Taiwan — China’s two days of military drills in waters surrounding Taiwan last month came closer than ever to the self-ruled island’s coast and were the largest-scale exercises in more than three years of exercises partly aimed at deterring a U.S. role in an actual war, analysts say.
A rocket artillery unit participating in the People’s Liberation Army Eastern Theater Command’s “Justice Mission 2025” drills fired shells into the sea into the contiguous zone 24 nautical miles off Taiwan’s coast on Dec. 30, the National Defense Ministry told domestic media.
The unit’s fire took place during PLA drills in five tracts of ocean — described overall as practice for blocking major Taiwanese air and sea routes with aircraft and naval assets, but this time without aircraft carriers. Carriers have joined other drills and are seen helping to ward off external intervention in the event of conflict.
Experts in Taipei said December’s drills were the biggest since 2022, when China began using military exercises to vent anger toward Taiwan’s defiance of Beijing and such U.S. moves as arms sales to Taipei. China has the world’s largest military in terms of active personnel, according to the market research firm Statista.
“The latest Justice Mission 2025 is quantitatively the second biggest,” said Enrico Cau, an associate researcher at the Taiwan Strategy Research Association think tank.
“In terms of complexity, like tactics and mission goals, all the exercises seem to have covered different missions and tasks, some overlapping, some different,” Cau said.
In particular, the “range” of the zones used for the latest exercises was “the largest”, said Chen Yi-fan, assistant professor in the Diplomacy and International Relations Department at Taiwan’s Tamkang University.
Beijing has claimed sovereignty over Taiwan for more than seven decades and threatened force to take it, if necessary. Years of opinion polls in Taiwan show preference for self-rule.
China sees Taiwan President Lai Ching-te as a champion for independence, and talks between the two sides fell apart in 2016.
In August 2022 — the biggest ever Taiwan-targeted drill — the PLA held four days of exercises after Nancy Pelosi, then the speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, visited Taipei. They included air sorties, ballistic missile tests and naval deployments.
The PLA has held seven of these drills since the Pelosi visit, Chen said.
Taiwan’s National Defense Ministry said it had tracked 60 sorties by Chinese fighters, bombers, drones and support aircraft in the 24 hours ending at 6 a.m. on Dec. 30. It said 44 of those crossed a median line in the 100-kilometer-wide Taiwan Strait that separates the two sides.
The ministry said it logged 40 sorties and eight median line crossings the following day.
Simulated PLA blockage of major Taiwanese sea and air routes disrupted hundreds of civilian flights, many connecting Taiwan to its outlying islands, domestic media outlets said.
Triggers for the December drills include the announcement of an $11.1 billion U.S. arms package for Taiwan alongside Taiwan’s own pledge to raise defense spending, Chen said.
The U.S. package is “specifically designed to tear apart the blockade concept that the PLA just showcased,” said Sean Su, a Taiwan businessperson and longtime political commentator.
The 1979 U.S. Taiwan Relations Act allows the United States to help defend Taiwan, if attacked, but Washington is vague about what it would offer and maintains diplomatic relations with Beijing rather than with Taipei.
Chinese robot dogs and “intelligent warfare” used on Dec. 29 and 30 looked good on television, Su said, but he said it is unclear whether the PLA could sustain the actions of the two days of drills during a longer conflict.
“The sustainability question is one Beijing doesn’t want to answer,” Su said. “The PLA has never shown its ability to sustain a blockade for weeks because they need to handle personnel shifts and logistics while operating under enemy fire and maintaining sensor-to-shooter connections against and potentially U.S. and Japanese interference.”
From a Chinese perspective, the Dec. 29-30 drills were “successfully completed,” PLA Eastern Theater Command Senior Captain Li Xi said via the military’s website. The command will now “remain on high alert at all times, keep strengthening combat readiness through arduous training, resolutely thwart the attempts of ‘Taiwan Independence’ separatists and external intervention, and firmly safeguard national sovereignty and territorial integrity,” Li said.
Taiwan’s Mainland Affairs Council, a government body in charge of China affairs, criticized the drills on Dec. 29 as an “irrational” move disrupting civilian traffic, affecting the security of “life and property” and trying to change the “status quo” of relations between the two sides.
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