China has made no bones about its ambition to seize Taiwan, possibly by blockading the self-governing island and cutting off supplies. Recently, the Chinese military conducted drills to thwart the US military from helping Taiwan.
According to an analysis by the Japan Institute for National Fundamentals, the Chinese drill in December 2024 was intended to practice how to stop the US forces from approaching the sea around the island.
In the war games, China deployed 18 destroyers and frigates to the east of the “first island chain,” stretching from Japan’s Nansei Islands to the Philippines, to deny access to American warships.
The drill was conducted between December 6-12. In order to prevent US forces from moving past the first island chain, which is located to the west of the second chain, and to the west of the “second island chain,” which extends from Guam to Japan’s Izu Islands, China employed anti-access/area denial (A2AD) strategy.
It was China’s largest military exercise in nearly three decades. In addition to demonstrating its capacity to blockade Taiwan, China projected power throughout the First Island Chain, which runs from Japan to Indonesia and encompasses the South and East China Seas.
In a notable development, the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) Eastern, Southern, and Northern Theater Commands coordinated their efforts for the first time, exerting pressure on Taiwan and its allies through extensive combined arms exercises across a broad region.
In addition to the more than 134 PLA warplanes that flew during the three-day exercises near the islands, China also deployed over 60 PLA Navy warships and 30 China Coast Guard vessels in regions spanning from the South China Sea to Japan’s Ryukyu Islands.
The Chinese soldiers rehearsed attacking foreign ships, blocking maritime channels, and intercepting commerce vessels without engaging in live-fire training. The PLA Navy also erected two barriers southeast of Taiwan to limit access to the First Island Chain.
Taiwan’s geography makes it vulnerable to a blockade. Its population, industry, and ports are concentrated on its western flank, closest to China. China might enforce a blockade by deploying ships and submarines to prevent ships from entering or leaving Taiwan’s ports. It could also control the skies with missiles and warplanes.
Political Storm “Brews” In China; Supreme Leader Xi Jinping Under Massive Pressure; What’s Cooking?
PLA writings emphasize that seizing the “three dominance” in key domains—information, maritime, and air—is crucial to executing a joint blockade campaign.
Even a limited blockade would threaten one of the busiest commerce routes in the world. The ports of Kaohsiung and Taichung on the island’s west coast receive a large portion of the shipping traffic in the Taiwan Strait.
France “Vows” To Defend Greenland; Offers To Deploy Soldiers To The Arctic Region Amid U.S. Threats
Taiwan is not explicitly mentioned in “The Science of Strategy,” a crucial textbook for officers in the People’s Liberation Army, but the objective is obvious. The textbook defines a “strategic blockade” as a means of ” destroying the enemy’s external economic and military connections, degrading its operational capacity and war-fighting potential, and leaving it isolated and unaided.”
For years, China has been normalizing its military presence around Taiwan. Chinese military forces have increased their flights over the so-called median line, an informal boundary between the two sides that they had rarely crossed in the past.
China’s military exercises, which include many incursions into Taiwan’s Air Defense Identification Zones (ADIZ), have begun to blur the lines between military exercises and actual war, according to the first article excerpt published in the online newspaper Taiwan News.
Taiwan’s air force, dwarfed by that of China, has repeatedly scrambled to see off almost daily missions by the Chinese military around the island. During the October 14, 2024 drills, Taiwan detected 153 Chinese aircraft, the highest figure for a single day.
In the December 2024 war drill analyzed by the Japanese think tank, the Chinese military also conducted a training session on quickly repairing runways if they were bombed in the Eastern Theater Command. The Eastern Theater Command is expected to be the main unit in charge should there be an invasion of Taiwan.
Maki Nakagawa, a research fellow at the institute, wrote: “The Chinese military seems to be flaunting its ability to respond to attacks on its strategic bases by the United States and Japan.”
As recently as on January 21, four Chinese Coast Guard ships entered restricted waters around Taiwan’s Kinmen Islands twice. Taiwan’s Coast Guard Authority said that it was the 56th such incursion since the beginning of 2024. Kinmen is located just two miles from mainland China.
Taiwan does not claim territorial waters or a contiguous zone around the islands due to their proximity to the PRC but maintains concentric prohibited and restricted zones around the islands that are roughly equivalent.
Controlling the restricted waters south of Kinmen could enable the Chinese Coast Guard to carry out a tight “quarantine” or blockade of the islands if it chooses, blocking passage between the islands and Taiwan proper.
Beijing normalized the Chinese Coast Guard incursions into the restricted waters around Kinmen in 2024 to assert its law enforcement jurisdiction and strain Taiwan’s Coast Guard Authority’s resources and threat awareness.
The PRC began these incursions after two PRC fishermen died when their speed boat capsized while fleeing a CGA ship in Kinmen’s prohibited waters in February 2024.
