Taiwan's defense ministry reported that an increasingly unpredictable Beijing is tightening its grip on the air and sea around the island, incorporating lessons from recent conflicts into its military exercises.
The report highlights escalating tensions in the Taiwan Strait and China's evolving military strategy, underscoring the geopolitical risks in the region and the potential implications for global supply chains and international relations.
Taiwan's defense ministry reported that an increasingly unpredictable Beijing is tightening its grip on the air and sea around the island, according to an annual review of the Chinese threat. The report also stated that China is learning lessons from issues faced by the United States in waging war on Iran.
China views democratically governed Taiwan as its own territory and has never renounced the use of force to bring the island under its control, sending its military into the waters and airspace around Taiwan on an almost daily basis. Taiwan's government rejects Beijing's sovereignty claims, asserting that only the island's people can decide their future. The United States supplies Taiwan with weapons while maintaining a policy of ambiguity about whether it would fight to defend it.
The ministry's annual report on China's military threat indicated that the regional security situation "continues to escalate," noting a "rising unpredictability" in China's decision-making due to an "unprecedented" purge of senior military officers. The report stated that China is incorporating lessons learned from the wars in Ukraine and the Gulf into its training and exercises, particularly noting the effectiveness of swarms of cheap drones in the Ukraine-Russia war. It also listed apparent U.S. problems revealed by the war against Iran, such as rapid ammunition consumption, strain on air-defense interception systems, industrial mobilization, and the fragility of allied cooperation.
Regarding the direct threat to Taiwan, the report said China's exercises around the island in recent years have centered on "joint blockade/control" of Taiwan's external sea lanes, while Beijing lacks the capability to mount an amphibious assault. During these exercises, China employs military aircraft and ships, as well as coast guard vessels, to "shape favorable conditions for an invasion of Taiwan... in order to cut off our external transportation routes and form an encirclement posture." The ministry added that through its regular combat readiness patrols, missions far out at sea, and other exercises, China is "strengthening its control" over the sea and airspace around the Taiwan Strait, aiming "to achieve the destruction of command-and-control and our air defense capacity in the early stage of combat."
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