military maneuvers Mission Justice 2025that China launched on Monday around Taiwan, reached an unprecedented scale this Tuesday in terms of geographical coverage and proximity to the main island. China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) launched ten hours of live-fire exercises in seven air and sea zones surrounding the autonomous territory on the second and, in theory, final day of operations designed to test rapid encirclement and test its ability to cut Taipei’s ties to external support in the event of conflict. The communist authorities formulated these war games as a demonstration of their determination to “fight separatism and promote reunification without hesitation”.
The military tests take place against a backdrop of growing tension in the strait: after the United States advanced procedures to sell the largest batch of weapons in history to the island enclave (valued at more than 9.4 billion euros), and with diplomatic relations between China and Japan in freefall following statements by ultra-conservative Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi, in which she suggested that a hypothetical Chinese attack on Taiwan could force her country to intervene militarily.
Interviewed Monday at his Mar-a-Lago residence, US President Donald Trump said he had a “very good relationship with President Xi (Jinping)” and that Chinese exercises “don’t concern him.” “They have been carrying out naval maneuvers in this area for 20 years,” he said.
The PLA has deployed destroyers, bombers and other naval and air units to conduct at-sea exercises, air defense operations and anti-submarine warfare exercises, with the stated aim of testing air-sea coordination for “integrated containment and control”. This morning, it also practiced attacks against maritime and air targets in the north and south, as well as artillery exercises and maneuvers with long-range missiles launched from Chinese soil towards Taiwan.
The rehearsals are led by the PLA’s Eastern Theater Command, one of the five major commands of the Chinese armed forces. Its main function is to direct and coordinate all of the Asian giant’s military operations on the country’s eastern flank, and would be responsible for any military scenario related to Taiwan.
Live fire tests will take place until 6:00 p.m. (11:00 a.m. in mainland Spain) in seven maritime and air zones near the island. The PLA initially announced restrictions in five areas, but the China Maritime Safety Administration later added two more, expanding the scope of the exercises.
A Taiwanese security source cited anonymously by Reuters indicated that Taipei was closely monitoring whether this series of maneuvers included launching missiles at Taiwan, as happened in August 2022, when Beijing reacted angrily to the visit of the Speaker of the United States House of Representatives, Democrat Nancy Pelosi. Demonstrations of military force near Taiwanese waters have become recurrent since then: China launches maneuvers in response to any action it deems provocative on the part of Taipei or Washington. The current projects are the sixth large-scale projects in three years.
Taiwanese President Lai Ching-te on Tuesday called on the population to remain “calm” and assured that the enclave would act “responsibly”. “We will not escalate the conflict or provoke disputes,” he wrote on his official Facebook account, where he also called for fighting “disinformation and fake news.” The island’s leader stressed that peace across the Taiwan Strait is a “shared aspiration of the international community” and criticized the behavior of the Chinese Communist Party: “It is far from that of a responsible great power,” he added.
Taiwan’s Defense Ministry detected about 130 PLA aircraft (90 of which crossed the median demarcation line), 14 ships and eight Chinese coast guard vessels near the island in the 24 hours up to 6 a.m. Tuesday (11 p.m. Monday in mainland Spain). This is the highest number recorded in a single day in 2025, although it remains lower than the 153 aircraft identified during the October 2024 maneuvers, launched by Beijing as “severe punishment” for a speech by Lai, whom it considers a “dangerous secessionist”.
Although Taiwan functions as a state de facto —it has a democratically elected government since 1996, a Constitution and an army—the majority of the international community (including the United States) does not recognize it as a sovereign country; only 12 nations in the world do so. However, Washington maintains a pact with Taipei under which it supplies weapons and rejects any changes to the agreements. status quo into the strait by force or coercion.
China, for its part, considers it a “rebel province”. The ancient island of Formosa (located about 130 kilometers from China’s Fujian province) is where Nationalist forces overthrown by Mao Zedong’s army went into exile after the end of the Chinese Civil War in 1949. Although the Communist Party has never exercised effective authority over Taiwan, it claims that reunification is a “historic mission” and does not rule out the use of force to achieve this goal.
Some €2.25 trillion in trade passes through the Taiwan Strait each year, while its airspace forms a key corridor linking China to markets in East and Southeast Asia. The maneuvers have a direct impact on this traffic: 11 of Taipei’s 14 air routes were affected, which affected more than 100,000 passengers and left only one commercial corridor operational, towards Japan.
In an informative email, analysts at the Euroasia Group analysis center say the intensity of military testing sends a clear signal of “determination to deter support from the United States and other external actors for Taiwan.” The firm adds that the official reference to “deterrence beyond the first island chain” should be read in conjunction with the recent US national security strategy, “which prioritizes military superiority to prevent conflict over Taiwan.” Despite this, the group considers it “unlikely” that the exercises will break the current truce between Washington and Beijing and rules out a serious crisis or drastic measures.
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