According to China’s defence ministry, the drills around Taiwan’s main island are meant to test the military’s ability to “seize power” in key areas — in essence, facilitate an annexation.
On the face of it, the message from China’s military exercise — which included units from the People’s Liberation Army, the PLA-Navy, Air Force and Coast Guard — is unambiguous. According to China’s defence ministry, the drills around Taiwan’s main island are meant to test the military’s ability to “seize power” in key areas — in essence, facilitate an annexation.
The drills, which began suddenly on Thursday, also conducted mock missile strikes targeting key offshore islands as well as strategically and commercially important sea lanes. The provocation is the election of Lai Ching Te — who assumed office on May 20 — as President of Taiwan. Lai is from the pro-sovereignty Democratic Progressive Party, which Beijing considers a “separatist” group.
It is easy to view the current exercise as a part of the uneasy equilibrium around Taiwan. In fact, similar drills were conducted by China in 2022 and 2023. Beijing keeps rattling the cage to intimidate the significant section of Taiwan’s leadership that is, at least in principle, committed to independence. Taiwan’s leadership has stopped short of forcing a change in the status quo as well.
After all, it has functional de facto autonomy even though China keeps making a de jure claim to its territory. In fact, the military escalation that would inevitably follow any attempt at annexation is bound to inform Beijing’s strategic calculus. Two factors in the current moment, however, complicate this picture and are cause for caution.
It may be that China’s power projection is not merely about intimidation. President Xi Jinping has repeated on numerous occasions that the “re-unification” of China and Taiwan is on his agenda, a likely component of his legacy. He has also refused to rule out the use of force. Even if such a maximalist position is political rhetoric, meant as much for domestic audiences as Taipei and Western capitals, it does not bode well.
Second, military drills and Chinese navy and coast guard patrols do not just project power, they try to assert it. There is little doubt that an expansionist China has been “slicing” territory from its neighbours and trying to expand its zone of influence in the South China Sea and the Indo-Pacific as a whole. This has caused much alarm in littoral states, many of which have deep economic ties with the aggressor. It is in this context of intimidation and expansion that the drills are taking place. Great and middle powers with stakes in the region must keep a close watch.
