Practice for a blockade
Published 8 October 2026
China answered Nancy Pelosi with live missiles. The then Speaker of the House landed late on Tuesday, August 2, 2022 at Songshan Airport in Taipei, from Malaysia, with six other lawmakers. She was greeted by Foreign Minister Joseph Wu and Sandra Oudkirk, then the top American representative, and Reuters called it the highest-level American visit in 25 years: the most senior political leader to visit since 1997. She held her meetings on Wednesday. Her statement said: "America's solidarity with the 23 million people of Taiwan is more important today than ever, as the world faces a choice between autocracy and democracy." Reuters reported that the White House did not want a crisis. China's defence ministry said the military would launch "targeted military operations," and Xinhua described live-fire drills from Thursday to Sunday.
On Thursday, August 4, China "deployed scores of planes and fired live missiles near Taiwan," in what Reuters called its biggest drills in the strait. The People's Liberation Army set six zones running until noon on Sunday and said it had activated more than 100 planes and over 10 warships. Taiwan's defense ministry said 22 Chinese fighters crossed the median line and that its troops fired flares to drive off four drones over the Kinmen islands. Taiwan counted 11 ballistic missiles, and Japan protested that five landed in its exclusive economic zone. The Eastern Theater Command named the training subjects as "joint blockade, sea target assault, strike on ground targets, airspace control operation." A Chinese defense ministry spokesperson said US-Taiwan "collusion and provocation will only push Taiwan towards the abyss of disaster," and President Tsai Ing-wen replied that Taiwan would not provoke conflict but would defend its sovereignty: "Taiwan will never be knocked down by challenges." One of the sources disagrees with itself about when the drills ended, August 11 or August 15, so no end date is printed here.
According to the Pentagon's report, the Pentagon's report to Congress gives a second version of the same operation: up to 14 PLA Navy ships, at least 182 aircraft entering the air defense identification zone, 92 crossing the centerline, and "at least four missiles that overflew the island - an unprecedented act." Reuters' 22 fighters crossing the median line is a one-day count from Taiwan for August 4. The Pentagon's 92 crossings cover the whole operation. They are different measures with different windows and should not be set against each other. On missile counts, one earlier tally treats the 11 missiles as twice the 1995 episode, but the National Defense University study counts six DF-15 launches in July 1995 and four more in March 1996, so that comparison depends on what you tally.
The Pentagon's report on China's military for 2025, which covers 2024, lists the exercises with its own counts. The figures below come from a 104-page mirror of the same title and edition, and are the report's, not independently checked against the official copy. In December 2022, shortly after the American president signed a defense bill with more Taiwan aid, 7 PLA Navy ships and 47 aircraft entered the zone, about 37 crossing the centerline. In April 2023 the PLA ran "Joint Sword," a three-day exercise responding to Tsai Ing-wen's transit of the United States, with at least 12 PLA Navy ships and at least 133 aircraft in the zone, 83 of them crossing the centerline. J-15s from the carrier Shandong in the western Philippine Sea entered the eastern zone. The report uses the same name that was later reused with year suffixes.
Lai Ching-te's first year produced two more. Joint Sword-2024A came days after his inauguration speech of Monday, May 20, 2024, which the People's Republic cited. Taiwan's own defense report dates it "from May 23 to 24, 2024." The Pentagon counts about 20 PLA Navy combatants, about 7 China Coast Guard ships integrated "for the first time," and 111 zone entries, 75 crossing the centerline. Joint Sword-2024B came after his National Day speech, which the Pentagon report dates to October 10, a Thursday. Reuters dated the drills Monday, October 14, 2024, run by the Eastern Theater Command in the Strait and areas north, south and east of Taiwan, and described "a day of war games." Some accounts give October 14 and 15 Beijing time. The defense ministry said it was not a repeat of 2024A but "an increase in pressure," and warned of further PLA action after what it called Taiwan-independence provocations, in the same Reuters account.
Counts for that day require attention to categories and reporting windows. The Pentagon puts "approximately 153 PLA aircraft entering Taiwan's ADIZ, 111 of which crossed the centerline," in its account of the exercise, with 14 PLA Navy ships and 12 China Coast Guard ships, "condensed to one day." Taiwan's defense ministry numbers, as relayed by the Global Taiwan Institute, give 153 aviation sorties, 47 in the Strait and 28 crossing the Strait centerline, with 14 navy vessels and 12 "official ships." The totals of 153 aircraft and 14 plus 12 vessels agree across both sources. GTI's 28 is a centerline-crossing subgroup of the 47 aircraft it places in the Strait, while the Pentagon's 111 is presented within its 153 ADIZ entries. These differently framed counts should not be treated as a like-for-like contradiction or combined into a new total. The carrier Liaoning was in a task group of at least four ships east-southeast of Taiwan near the Bashi Channel, according to Japan's defense ministry. The Pentagon adds that an Eastern Theater rocket-force unit supplied drone surveillance "for the first time during an exercise targeted at Taiwan," and that China "reportedly utilized cyber operations though did not penetrate or compromise" Taiwan's military internet systems. It also says both 2024 Joint Sword exercises were the first times the PLA publicized military operations after speeches from Taiwan's Presidential Office. Before that, Beijing's only explicit reply to such speeches was a Taiwan Affairs Office statement. Xi Jinping visited Dongshan Island on October 15, 2024, the day after Joint Sword-2024B ended.
Taiwan's 2025 National Defense Report, an 18th edition of about 65,000 words published under Article 30 of the National Defense Act and posted by USNI News on November 25, 2025, describes something the Pentagon does not name. It says the PLA conducted "a 4-day large-scale military operation in December" 2024, "longer than previous exercises, without making any announcement in advance, attempting to normalize blockades of waterways and air space surrounding the Taiwan Strait." The report's own map labels the dates "December 9 to 11, 2024," which is three days, so the report is inconsistent with itself, and the safest wording is a multi-day operation in December 2024 that Taiwan reported and the Pentagon did not name.
On Thursday, March 13, 2025, after a meeting with senior security officials, Lai set out 17 response measures. He said Beijing used Taiwan's democracy to "absorb" people from organized crime groups, media and the military and police, and "They (China) are carrying out activities such as division, destruction, and subversion from within us." He said 64 people had been charged with Chinese espionage the previous year, three times the 2021 figure, mostly current or former military. Beijing's Taiwan Affairs Office warned that "Those who play with fire will surely be burned," and the foreign ministry said nothing would change "the inevitable event of the reunification with the motherland."
Strait Thunder-2025A followed on April 1 and 2, 2025, a Tuesday and a Wednesday. Reuters called it a two-day war game with long-range live fire in the East China Sea, an aircraft carrier involved, and "precision strikes on simulated targets of key ports and energy facilities." Reuters noted that Taiwan said it did not detect live fire near the island, and the Eastern Theater Command said the drills tested "integrated joint operations capabilities." Taiwan's defense report describes "an unnamed military exercise on April 1, 2025" and "Exercise STRAIT THUNDER-2025A on April 2," so the two sources differ on whether April 1 carried the name. The report adds "inspection, capture, verification, and identification" as new drill elements and says the PLA streamed live-fire images and "satellite images of core areas of Taipei."
The largest by area in Reuters' December account began on Monday, December 29, 2025 and ended Tuesday, December 30. Justice Mission 2025 had a record seven live-fire zones. Reuters described the command's announced tasks as live fire, simulated strikes on land and sea targets, and drills to blockade the island's main ports. The task list matters more than a slogan: a drill directed at ports tests the routes by which outside supplies would reach Taiwan. On the first day Taiwan's defense ministry and Reuters counted 89 Chinese aircraft, 14 warships and 14 coast guard boats. Measured over the ministry's 24-hour windows, the count reached 130 aircraft, 90 of which crossed the median line, plus 14 navy ships and 8 official ships. The two sets of numbers use different reporting windows; they are not interchangeable counts. Reuters reported that more than 100,000 passengers on scheduled international flights were expected to be affected and around 80 domestic flights were set to be cancelled.
President Trump's reaction was a shrug on the record. "I have a great relationship with President Xi, and he hasn't told me anything about it," he said on December 29. "Nothing worries me. Nothing. They've been doing naval exercises for 20 years in that area." Taiwan's defense intelligence official Hsieh Jih-sheng said Taipei was "preparing for the worst."
The mega-drills draw the attention, but the daily pressure may matter more. CSIS's Futures Lab, in a May 5, 2026 report, found that between January 2020 and December 2025 the daily average of distinct China Coast Guard vessels entering Taiwan's near waters rose by more than 500 percent, while daily incursions into Taiwan's second maritime security ring more than quadrupled on average. Publicly reported PLA Air Force aircraft visits to dual-use airfields that may support missions near Taiwan also increased. The authors read this as a campaign to "normalize coercive behavior" and to "erode the island's military readiness." In short, the weather forecast at the top of this piece is the strategy.
Three different measures circulate for the air numbers, and they get confused. The Jamestown Foundation's China Brief of January 24, 2026, by K. Tristan Tang and working from Taiwan's defense ministry press releases, gives them in a table. In 2023 Taiwan detected 4,711 PLA aircraft sorties, 1,703 of them crossing the median line (36.1%), with 1,915 PLA naval vessels operating around the island. In 2024 it was 5,105 sorties, 3,070 crossings (60.1% of sorties) and 2,501 vessels. In 2025 it was a record 5,446 sorties, 3,763 crossings (69.1%) and 2,613 vessels, all record highs. Days with more than 30 aircraft sorties numbered 28 in 2023, 32 in 2024 and 46 in 2025, and days with at least 10 vessels numbered 24, 38 and 32 respectively. The analyst is the source of the interpretation, and the numbers are the ministry's.
The Pentagon report gives 3,067 ADIZ entries in 2024 against 1,641 in 2023 in one account. Elsewhere it says approximately 2,771 PLA aircraft had been detected in the zone as of late November 2024, against around 1,703 for all of 2023; a later passage repeats 2,771 for 2024 alongside 1,733 in 2022 and 972 in 2021. The late-November cutoff matters. The figures are retained as the report labels them, without trying to reconcile them with each other or with Jamestown's separately compiled series. The Pentagon says the Navy had 5 to 9 vessels around Taiwan on about 75% of days in 2024, 46% of days in 2023 and 27% in 2022. It counts 38 joint combat readiness patrols in 2024, "near-weekly," while the defense ministry figures relayed by Jamestown count 40 in both 2024 and 2025, including 22 in the first half of 2025 and 18 in the second. Those are two attributed counts, not a blended estimate.
Tang reads the 2025 plateau as a "near-term saturation point," likely reflecting disruption in PLA leadership after the removal of Central Military Commission vice chairman He Weidong, who in Tang's account disappeared around March 2025 and was formally removed months later, plus a shift of resources toward joint training farther from Taiwan. He says it "does not signal a reduced threat." That is one analyst's explanation, and the He Weidong account is his, as cited from China Brief.