- China’s military activities around Taiwan have increased in the first few months of the year.
- The escalation appears linked to China’s prioritization of realistic combat training, new research says.
- China has a string of military modernization goals, with the first rapidly approaching.
It’s not just a show of force. China’s military activities around Taiwan are increasingly realistic combat training, readying it for the real deal.
New research on these activities indicates the Chinese military is more active near Taiwan than it has been in the past, with increased daily operations and more frequent patrols and exercises.
K. Tristan Tang, a research associate at the Research Project on China’s Defense Affairs, writes in a new report that China’s military activities in the waters and airspace around Taiwan reached a new high last year. This trend continued in January and February of this year, with activity surging higher.
The Chinese activity around Taiwan consistently prompts responses from Tawain’s military, such as air defense and shore battery movements, combat air patrols, and more, and those responses offer valuable insight to the Chinese armed forces.
In this situation, China’s People’s Liberation Army is “using the enemy to train the troops,” a practice of conducting exercises close to foreign forces for more realistic and applicable outcomes, Tang said. Similar observations have been made about the risky maneuvers around US aircraft by Chinese pilots. The Chinese navy, likewise, has embraced this doctrine with US vessels.
Realistic combat training has been a growing priority for the Chinese PLA and has been heavily emphasized in recent years. It allows troops to get a better sense of the actual challenges on the battlefield and understand more about their adversaries. These aren’t simple displays of military power, there for show; instead, the activities offer experience needed for combat action.
People’s Liberation Army
Chinese leader Xi Jinping emphasized the need for realistic combat training in 2018, instructing the military to “to strengthen real combat training and improve its war-winning capability,” according to state media.
The emphasis could be seen in PLA’s recent large-scale joint exercises surrounding Taiwan, namely the two “Joint Sword” drills that occurred last year.
Joint Sword-2024 A occurred in May, while Joint Sword-2024 B took place in October. Both involved elements of the PLA conducting demonstrations around Taiwan. May’s came on the heels of Taiwanese President Lai Ching-te’s inauguration and October’s after Taiwanese Independence Day.
The drills sent a message to Taiwan and its international partners, but there was more to it than that.
Two developments seen in 2025 so far indicate the PLA Navy specifically is enhancing its realistic combat training, per Tang. The first is that PLA Navy activities around Taiwan have seen an overall increase.
Numbers from Taiwan’s Ministry of Defense indicate a rise in the number of PLAN vessels operating near Taiwan compared to previous years, 419 in the first two months of this year compared to 305 in 2024 and 218 in 2023.
Similarly, the number of joint combat readiness patrols involving assets from multiple military branches, such as PLAN vessels and PLA Air Force planes, are higher as well. And the number of PLAN ships involved in these patrols is up, too.
Gui Xinhua/PLA/China Military/Anadolu via Getty Images
Another notable development was the large deployment of a Type 75 landing helicopter dock amphibious assault ship task force near Taiwan last month, which was early in the annual training cycle and the largest publicly disclosed LHD task force ever near Taiwan, Tang said.
It’s not initially clear whether these efforts are intended to put pressure on Taiwan or if increasing readiness ahead of China’s 2027 goals is the priority. US officials have said China plans to be ready to take Taiwan — by force, if necessary — by that year. That is an observed readiness goal, not necessarily an assault date.
China considers Taiwan as part of its territory. Xi has made reunification with the island nation a priority.
China has broad military modernization goals for 2027, the 100th anniversary of the People’s Liberation Army. It also has goals for 2035 and 2049, the latter of which is 100 years after the founding of the People’s Republic of China. By then, China intends to possess a “world-class military” that can fight and win wars.
Increasing its military presence around Taiwan to gain more realistic training falls in line with “accelerating efforts to meet” the 2027 agenda items, Tang said, “regardless of whether an actual invasion of Taiwan occurs.”
Feng Hao/PLA/China Military/Anadolu via Getty Images
Documents related to Taiwan’s defense drills that were reviewed by Bloomberg identified 2027 as a possible invasion date. The Han Kuang Exercise, Taiwan’s largest live-fire defense drill, will also double in length to 10 days in total this summer.
Business Insider was unable to independently confirm these details. The Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office in the US didn’t immediately respond to BI’s questions on the date or its impact on the annual exercise.
