China has held two-day military drills \u2013 Justice Mission 2025 \u2013 around Taiwan, marking the sixth round of large-scale war games since 2022, when then-Speaker of the United States House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi visited the island.<\/p>\n
The exercise included 10 hours of live fire drills on Tuesday as Chinese forces practised encircling Taiwan and blockading its major ports.<\/p>\n list of 4 items<\/span>end of list<\/span><\/section>\n The war games began on Monday in the waters and airspace to the north, southwest, southeast and east of Taiwan\u2019s main island, according to China\u2019s Eastern Theatre Command spokesperson Shi Yi.<\/p>\n The exercises saw China deploy its naval destroyers, frigates, fighter planes, bombers, drones, and long-range missiles to simulate seizing control of Taiwan\u2019s airspace, blockading its ports, and striking critical infrastructure, \u201cmobile ground targets\u201d and maritime targets, Shi said.<\/p>\n The exercises also simulated a blockade of Taiwan and its main ports, Keelung and Kaohsiung.<\/p>\n Tuesday\u2019s live-fire drills were held in five zones around Taiwan between 8am and 6pm local time (00:00 GMT and 10:00 GMT), according to the Eastern Theatre Command. Chinese forces fired long-range rockets into the waters around the island, according to a video released by the military on social media.<\/p>\n Taiwan\u2019s coastguard said seven rockets were fired into two drill zones around the main island.<\/p>\n Taiwan\u2019s Ministry of Defence said it had tracked 130 air sorties by Chinese aircraft, 14 naval ships and eight \u201cofficial ships\u201d between 6am on Monday and 6am on Tuesday.<\/p>\n Ninety of the air sorties crossed into Taiwan\u2019s air defence identification zone (ADIZ), an area of land and sea monitored by Taipei, during the 24 hours, in the second-largest incursion of its kind since 2022.<\/p>\n Justice Mission 2025 was the largest war game since 2022 in terms of the area covered, according to Jaime Ocon, a research fellow at Taiwan Security Monitor.<\/p>\n \u201cThese zones are very, very big, especially the southern and southeast zones around Taiwan, which actually breached territorial waters,\u201d he told Al Jazeera, referring to the region within 12 nautical miles (22km) of Taiwan\u2019s coast. \u201cThat\u2019s a big escalation from previous exercises.\u201d<\/p>\n They also focused explicitly on blockading Taiwan, unlike past iterations, sending a strong message to Taipei and its unofficial allies, particularly the US and Japan.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is a clear demonstration of China\u2019s capability to conduct A2\/AD \u2013 anti-access aerial denial \u2013 making sure that Taiwan can be cut off from the world and that other actors like Japan, the Philippines, or the United States cannot directly intervene,\u201d Ocon said.<\/p>\n A blockade would impact not only the delivery of weapons systems but also critical imports, such as natural gas and coal, that Taiwan relies on to meet nearly all its energy needs. It would also disrupt vital global shipping routes through the Taiwan Strait.<\/p>\n Alexander Huang, director-general of Taiwan\u2019s Council on Strategic and Wargaming Studies, told Al Jazeera the drills were similar to those held after Pelosi\u2019s visit in August 2022.<\/p>\n \u201cFor this drill, it actually interfered with international civil aviation routes and also maritime shipping routes. In previous drills, they tried to avoid that, but this time they actually disrupted the air and maritime traffic,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n The drills also put pressure on Taiwan\u2019s maritime and transport links to Kinmen and Matsu islands, which are closer to the Chinese mainland.<\/p>\n China has a history of holding military exercises to express its anger with Taiwan and its allies, but large-scale exercises have become more frequent since Pelosi\u2019s Taiwan visit.<\/p>\n Beijing claims Taiwan as a province and has accused the US of interfering in its internal affairs by continuing to sell weapons to Taipei and supporting its \u201cseparatist\u201d government led by President William Lai Ching-te.<\/p>\n Washington does not officially recognise Taiwan, whose formal name is the Republic of China, but it has pledged to help Taipei defend itself under the 1979 Taiwan Relations Act and the 1982 Six Assurances.<\/p>\n The Justice Mission 2025 came just days after Washington approved a record-breaking $11.1bn arms sale to Taiwan.<\/p>\n China\u2019s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said on Monday that the drills were a \u201cpunitive and deterrent action against separatist forces who seek \u2018Taiwan independence\u2019 through military build-up, and a necessary move to safeguard China\u2019s national sovereignty and territorial integrity\u201d. Beijing sanctioned 30 US firms and individuals over the arms sale.<\/p>\n Experts also say the exercises were linked to a separate but related diplomatic row between China and Japan.<\/p>\n Beijing was angered in November by remarks from Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi that an attack on Taiwan would be a \u201csurvival-threatening situation\u201d for Japan. Such a scenario would legally permit Japan to exercise its \u201cright of collective self-defence\u201d and deploy its military, she said.<\/p>\n Taiwan cancelled more than 80 domestic flights on Tuesday and warned that more than 300 international flights could be delayed due to flight rerouting during the live-fire drills.<\/p>\n Taiwan\u2019s Defence Ministry said the coastguard monitored the exercises near the outlying islands and that an undisclosed number of naval vessels had also been deployed nearby. Taipei also monitored all incursions into its ADIZ, including the Taiwan Strait, sections of coastal China, and waters around Taiwan.<\/p>\n In a statement on Tuesday, Defence Minister Wellington Koo said, \u201c[Beijing\u2019s] highly provocative actions severely undermine regional peace and stability [and] also pose a significant security risk and disruption to transport ships, trade activities, and flight routes.\u201d<\/p>\n Koo described the exercises as a form of \u201ccognitive warfare\u201d that aimed to \u201cdeplete Taiwan\u2019s combat capabilities through a combination of military and non-military means, and to create division and conflict within Taiwanese society through a strategy of sowing discord\u201d.<\/p>\n US President Donald Trump has so far remained quiet about the military drills, telling reporters on Monday that he was \u201cnot worried\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cI have a great relationship with President Xi, and he hasn\u2019t told me anything about it,\u201d Trump said when asked about the exercises during a news conference, according to Reuters. \u201cI don\u2019t believe he\u2019s going to be doing it,\u201d he added, seemingly referring to the prospect of actual military action targeting Taiwan.<\/p>\n William Yang, a senior analyst for Northeast Asia at the International Crisis Group, told Al Jazeera that Trump might avoid saying much about the Justice Mission 2025 exercises as he hopes to meet President Xi Jinping in April to discuss a US-China trade deal. \u201cIt\u2019s a diplomatic strategy to make sure the US response is not going to immediately upset the temporary trade truce between the US and China,\u201d Yang said.<\/p>\n \u201cI think it\u2019s quite consistent with how he personally and his administration have been handling the issue of Taiwan by trying to de-prioritise making public statements,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n China has held two-day military drills \u2013 Justice Mission 2025 \u2013 around Taiwan, marking the sixth round of large-scale war games since 2022, when then-Speaker of the United States House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi visited the island. The exercise included 10 hours of live fire drills on Tuesday as Chinese forces practised encircling Taiwan and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6937,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6936","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-explained"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6936","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6936"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6936\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/6937"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6936"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6936"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6936"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Recommended Stories <\/h2>\n
What happened during the Justice Mission 2025?<\/h2>\n
![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.aljazeera.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/2025-12-30T050216Z_152558817_RC2SQIA2DD2S_RTRMADP_3_CHINA-TAIWAN-DRILLS-1767075841.jpg?w=770&resize=770%2C433&quality=80\")
How were the exercises different from last time?<\/h2>\n
Why did China stage the exercises now?<\/h2>\n
![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.aljazeera.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/2025-12-30T012929Z_1402405084_RC2OQIATOZLA_RTRMADP_3_CHINA-TAIWAN-DRILLS-1767075644.jpg?w=770&resize=770%2C513&quality=80\")
How is Taiwan responding to the drills?<\/h2>\n
How did the US respond to the drills?<\/h2>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"