What sits across the water
Published 8 October 2026
On December 23, 2025, the Department of Defense sent Congress its annual report on China's military. It says the PLA "continues to make steady progress toward its 2027 goals, whereby the PLA must be able to achieve 'strategic decisive victory' over Taiwan." The report's own gloss: "In other words, China expects to be able to fight and win a war on Taiwan by the end of 2027." It lists the options Beijing is refining to force unification: "most dangerously, an amphibious invasion, firepower strike, and possibly a maritime blockade." Strikes could reach "1500-2000 nautical miles from China," and China's announced defense budget has "nearly doubled" since Xi's first full year as general secretary. The report also says Beijing "does not merely seek to deter Taiwan from formally declaring its independence," but to apply "near constant pressure." It notes that the repeated omission of "peaceful unification" language in 2024 and 2025 statements, and the February 2025 Taiwan Affairs Work Conference's dropping of the phrase about "peaceful development of cross-Strait relations," point to a harder line.
That is the 2027 date as a Pentagon reading of Chinese goals, and it is not the same thing as a decision to attack. Reuters, in a November 20, 2025 update of a November 11 explainer, says Xi "has ordered his military to be ready to take Taiwan by 2027, U.S. officials say," and that "many analysts see that as an attempt to galvanize his military rather than a timeline for invasion." The Global Taiwan Institute notes that Admiral Philip Davidson's March 9, 2021 testimony described a goal to accelerate modernization "in time for the PLA's 100th anniversary in 2027," and that China's defense ministry said in March 2025 it was on track on schedule. That is a modernization goal, not an invasion date. A March 18, 2026 American intelligence assessment found that Chinese leaders "do not currently plan to execute an invasion of Taiwan in 2027," according to CNBC. The Reuters story of October 1 pushes in the same direction. These are three different claims, from US officials, from analysts and from the Chinese military, and they are kept apart here.
The Eastern Theater Command was formed in the 2016 reform that replaced seven military regions. Its ground force headquarters is in Fuzhou, its Joint Operations Command Center is in Nanjing, and it oversees the 71st, 72nd and 73rd Group Armies. The Pentagon says its posture "allows the PLA to challenge Taiwan in the air, land, sea, space and information domains with minimal warning." Fujian province, which the 2024 Pentagon report names 16 times, hosts rocket force brigades, including DF-17 units in the Nanping and Yong'an areas, and air bases at Longtian near Fuzhou, assessed as the closest PLA Air Force base to Taiwan, Hui'an in Quanzhou, and Shuimen. In 1995 and 1996 DF-15 missiles were fired from Yong'an and Nanping. Dongshan Island, at the southern mouth of the Strait, has been a training hub since 1995-96, with Dacheng Bay amphibious training bases and the 73rd Group Army's air brigade in nearby Zhangzhou. The Global Taiwan Institute wrote on July 16, 2026 that Fujian militia units train "tens of thousands" each year there.
The Pentagon counts six amphibious combined-arms brigades in the Army, four in the Eastern Theater and two in the Southern Theater, and eight maneuver brigades in the Marine Corps, with two in the Eastern Theater and two in the Southern Theater that would take part in an invasion. The Air Force's Airborne Corps fields six airborne combined-arms brigades, three light motorized brigades, two mechanized brigades and one air-assault brigade. Its assessment of lift is the caveat to the invasion talk: "There is no indication the PLAN is significantly expanding its number of tank landing ships and medium sized landing craft, despite almost certainly not having the conventional air and maritime lift capacity to conduct a large-scale amphibious assault on Taiwan." It adds that the Navy trains with civilian roll-on/roll-off vessels, which may be a way to cover the shortfall. It calls an amphibious invasion "one of the most complicated and difficult military operations for the PLA, requiring it to achieve and maintain air and maritime superiority," says Beijing is preparing for a Joint Island Landing Campaign and could conclude it is the only prudent option for compelling unification, and says PLA leaders are "unsure" of its readiness to seize Taiwan while countering American involvement.
The report names four options Beijing "is likely considering": coercion short of war, a joint firepower strike campaign, a joint blockade campaign and the landing campaign. On blockade it says the PLA "probably would posture air and naval forces to conduct weeks or months of blockade operations while conducting missile strikes and possible seizures of Taiwan's offshore islands." Taiwan's defense report, referencing "publicly available information," estimates that "a PRC invasion of Taiwan would require approximately 100,000 troops, including airborne, heliborne, and amphibious landing troops." That is Taiwan's own planning estimate from open sources. The Pentagon report gives no invasion troop figure.
The Pentagon says the J-16 and J-20 give the Air Force "a growing inventory and standoff capability," that KJ-500 early-warning aircraft improved surveillance during surges near Taiwan, and that Joint Sword showed it can operate against Taiwan "without requiring refueling." The rocket force is prepared for missile attacks on "Taiwan's C2 facilities, air bases, and radar sites." The Strategic Support Force was dissolved in 2024 and replaced by the Information Support Force, Cyberspace Force and Aerospace Force, and Xi attended the ceremony for the Information Support Force in April 2024. The report says the reorganization leaves "organizational challenges" for cyber and non-kinetic forces. The Taiwan defense report says the rocket force has increased the number of Dongfeng missiles deployed with a range covering the Western Pacific, the Indian Ocean and South China Sea, and that the PLA is "increasing the number of nuclear warheads."
According to Taiwan's defense report, the Taiwan report gives the PLA's strength as it states it: about 965,000 Army personnel, about 260,000 in the Navy, about 395,000 in the Air Force, about 120,000 in the Rocket Force and about 150,000 in the Joint Logistics Support Force. Those are Taiwan's figures.
The Fujian, hull CV-18, which Taiwan's report calls the Type 003, began its first sea trials in May 2024. It is the first Chinese carrier of indigenous design and the first flat-deck carrier, larger than the Liaoning and Shandong, with a planned air wing of J-35, J-15T, J-15D, Z-20, KJ-600 and uncrewed aircraft. The Navy "aims to produce six aircraft carriers by 2035 for a total of nine." The Liaoning and Shandong carried out dual-carrier operations in October 2024 for the first time, in the Yellow Sea, East China Sea and South China Sea. Taiwan's report also names a fourth Type 075 amphibious assault ship, the Type 076 under construction, the 055, 052D and 054A/B combatants, the 093B and 094 submarines, the YJ-21 missile and railgun technology. The Pentagon records the launch of the first Type 076 amphibious assault ship in late December 2024, with an electromagnetic catapult and likely UAV capability, on printed page 53. The Pentagon's own line that the PLA Navy deployed a carrier task group east of Taiwan during Joint Sword-2024B to simulate blockade and challenge "potential third-party access" fits the Type 075 deployment reported during Justice Mission.
Taiwan's force-structure review since 2024 follows the principle of "replacing manpower with technology and replacing conventional forces with firepower," taking account of the one-year conscription term and the number of conscription-age men, with a goal to meet operational requirements "without increasing the establishment size and structure." From 2024, all soldiers, whether four-month conscripts, one-year conscripts or volunteers, receive eight weeks of basic training. Starting in 2025, small-arms and crew-served-weapon training was added to the eight weeks, and conscripts get basic drone and anti-armor instruction. After training, conscripts go mainly to coastal defense infantry brigades at their home of record, though they may choose to serve in the active force.
Reserve reform aims to bring active units to full strength with mobilized reserves of regular forces plus recall of reserve-force units, "to achieve parity between regular and reserve forces." The plan was to train an additional "over 20,000 reservists" in 14-day recall training in 2025, with 5-to-7-day recalls continuing. Voluntary recall training had 65 slots for male and 8 for female reservists in 2023, 220 and 48 in 2024, and 238 and 118 in 2025. The report gives no total active-duty headcount or reserve total, speaking only of "establishment size" without a number, so none is printed here.