China has held two-day military drills – Justice Mission 2025 – 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 blockading its major ports.
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What happened during the Justice Mission 2025?
The war games began on Monday in the waters and airspace to the north, southwest, southeast and east of Taiwan’s main island, according to China’s Eastern Theatre Command spokesperson Shi Yi.
The exercises saw China deploy its naval destroyers, frigates, fighter planes, bombers, drones, and long-range missiles to simulate seizing control of Taiwan’s airspace, blockading its ports, and striking critical infrastructure, “mobile ground targets” and maritime targets, Shi said.
The exercises also simulated a blockade of Taiwan and its main ports, Keelung and Kaohsiung.
Tuesday’s 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.
Taiwan’s coastguard said seven rockets were fired into two drill zones around the main island.
Taiwan’s Ministry of Defence said it had tracked 130 air sorties by Chinese aircraft, 14 naval ships and eight “official ships” between 6am on Monday and 6am on Tuesday.
Ninety of the air sorties crossed into Taiwan’s 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.
How were the exercises different from last time?
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.
“These zones are very, very big, especially the southern and southeast zones around Taiwan, which actually breached territorial waters,” he told Al Jazeera, referring to the region within 12 nautical miles (22km) of Taiwan’s coast. “That’s a big escalation from previous exercises.”
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.
“This is a clear demonstration of China’s capability to conduct A2/AD – anti-access aerial denial – 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,” Ocon said.
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.
Alexander Huang, director-general of Taiwan’s Council on Strategic and Wargaming Studies, told Al Jazeera the drills were similar to those held after Pelosi’s visit in August 2022.
“For 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,” he said.
The drills also put pressure on Taiwan’s maritime and transport links to Kinmen and Matsu islands, which are closer to the Chinese mainland.
Why did China stage the exercises now?
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’s Taiwan visit.
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 “separatist” government led by President William Lai Ching-te.
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.
The Justice Mission 2025 came just days after Washington approved a record-breaking $11.1bn arms sale to Taiwan.
China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said on Monday that the drills were a “punitive and deterrent action against separatist forces who seek ‘Taiwan independence’ through military build-up, and a necessary move to safeguard China’s national sovereignty and territorial integrity”. Beijing sanctioned 30 US firms and individuals over the arms sale.
Experts also say the exercises were linked to a separate but related diplomatic row between China and Japan.
Beijing was angered in November by remarks from Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi that an attack on Taiwan would be a “survival-threatening situation” for Japan. Such a scenario would legally permit Japan to exercise its “right of collective self-defence” and deploy its military, she said.
How is Taiwan responding to the drills?
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.
Taiwan’s 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.
In a statement on Tuesday, Defence Minister Wellington Koo said, “[Beijing’s] 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.”
Koo described the exercises as a form of “cognitive warfare” that aimed to “deplete Taiwan’s 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”.
How did the US respond to the drills?
US President Donald Trump has so far remained quiet about the military drills, telling reporters on Monday that he was “not worried”.
“I have a great relationship with President Xi, and he hasn’t told me anything about it,” Trump said when asked about the exercises during a news conference, according to Reuters. “I don’t believe he’s going to be doing it,” he added, seemingly referring to the prospect of actual military action targeting Taiwan.
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. “It’s a diplomatic strategy to make sure the US response is not going to immediately upset the temporary trade truce between the US and China,” Yang said.
“I think it’s quite consistent with how he personally and his administration have been handling the issue of Taiwan by trying to de-prioritise making public statements,” he said.