Last week, Taiwanese President Lai Ching-te toured the Pacific, visiting some tiny island states that remain on the increasingly short list of diplomatic allies of Taiwan. During the trip, Lai made extended stops in the U.S. territories of Hawaii and Guam. These two stops, as in previous visits by Taiwanese leaders to the U.S., were expected to provoke a reaction from China. It was only a matter of time to see how the military of the Asian giant would respond to what they consider a provocation by the president of the island that Beijing regards as a separatist province.
On Monday, from Taipei, it was announced that they had raised their alert level because Chinese military vessels and coast guard ships were moving in waters near the Taiwan Strait. A day later, the Taiwanese Ministry of Defense stated that China was deploying "its largest naval fleet in regional waters in nearly three decades."
This announcement caught the attention of the international press, awaiting the Chinese People's Liberation Army (PLA) to announce new large-scale military exercises around the self-governing island, which would be the third this year.
However, Beijing did not officially announce any maneuvers in that area, something they had done on other occasions when the PLA conducted invasion drills. On Wednesday, the Chinese government did state that its military would take "necessary measures" to defend the country's sovereignty and "will not tolerate separatist activities."
In Taiwan, it was explained that the Chinese deployment included around 90 ships and 47 fighter jets. This Wednesday, Taiwanese authorities stated that there had been an increase in military activity around the island with 53 Chinese aircraft. From the U.S., Taiwan's main international supporter, the tone of alarm from Taipei was toned down to say that the recent Chinese naval deployments in the East China Sea and the South China Sea were "consistent with previous large-scale exercises." In other words, according to Washington officials, China's military pressure is high, but nothing out of the ordinary.
Beijing began conducting large-scale invasion and blockade drills around Taiwan after the provocative visit in the summer of 2022 by then U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. In April 2023, when former Taiwanese leader Tsai Ing-wen traveled to California to meet with Kevin McCarthy, then House Speaker, the Chinese military rehearsed launching fighter jets from aircraft carriers.
In October, the PLA deployed 153 fighter jets and nearly thirty warships, including one of its three aircraft carriers, to conduct a total blockade exercise at seven points around the island, aiming to isolate Taiwan from rapid U.S. assistance. A week later, Beijing conducted other major military exercises, this time with live-fire drills.
During his visit last week to Hawaii and Guam, President Lai met with local authorities and state legislators. "Peace is priceless, and war has no winners; we have to fight, fight together to avoid war," Lai said in a speech in Honolulu. Since Taiwan does not maintain formal diplomatic relations with the U.S. (Washington broke them off in 1979 to establish ties with Beijing), officials from both countries carefully handle every detail of these trips to ensure they are nothing more than "transits" for Taiwanese leaders on U.S. soil.
In Beijing, which opposes any official contact between Washington and Taipei, they closely monitored Lai's trip to Hawaii and Guam, two islands hosting U.S. military facilities that could quickly be activated in any conflict related to Taiwan.