Global & US Headlines
PLA Eastern Theater Command Launches Multi-Axis Live-Fire Drills Encircling Taiwan
On 29 Dec 2025 Beijing began a coordinated land-sea-air exercise spanning five announced zones around Taiwan, running 08:00-18:00 on 30 Dec and featuring live ammunition.
Focusing Facts
- Notice lists five exclusion zones published 29 Dec, with drills confined to the windows 08:00–18:00 local time, 30 Dec 2025.
- Eastern Theater Command deployed destroyers, frigates, fighters, bombers, UAVs and long-range rocket artillery in simultaneous northern, central, southwestern and eastern sectors.
- Separate bomber task forces flew ‘far-seas combat-readiness patrols’ east of Taiwan focusing on long-distance raids and joint precision strikes.
Context
Beijing’s drill pattern echoes the March 1996 Taiwan Strait Crisis when the PLA bracketed the island with missile splash-downs, and reprises the August 2022 exercises following Speaker Pelosi’s visit that simulated a blockade across six zones. What distinguishes 2025 is the PLA’s routine, almost calendar-like normalization of encirclement drills, reflecting a decade-long shift from symbolic shows of force to rehearsed joint-operations aimed at rapid domination of the near seas. This fits into a larger 100-year arc of People’s Republic ambitions— the 2049 ‘centenary’ goal of military modernisation and unification— while also testing U.S.–Japan reaction cycles and stressing Taiwan’s air-defense resources. Whether remembered as incremental pressure or a rehearsal for actual coercion, each exercise tightens the strategic vise in the Western Pacific and erodes the notion that the Taiwan Strait is high-seas international water, a legal and geopolitical premise dating back to post-1949 U.S. Seventh Fleet patrols.
Perspectives
Chinese state-owned media
People’s Daily, China Daily, China News Service — Present the PLA exercises as scheduled professional training meant to test joint-operations capabilities and safeguard security around Taiwan, urging civilian craft to keep clear. Consistently omits any suggestion that the drills are coercive or politically motivated, mirroring official PLA talking points that reinforce Beijing’s sovereignty narrative.
Regional non-Chinese press
Outlook India/Press Trust of India — Frames the same drills as a fresh show of force occurring amid heightened diplomatic frictions over U.S. arms sales to Taiwan and tensions with Japan, highlighting the scale of deployed missile and air assets. Relies almost entirely on Chinese official releases while accentuating the atmosphere of regional tension, which can overstate confrontation without providing Taiwanese or Western military context.