PLA Eastern Theater Command Launches Multi-Axis Live-Fire Drills Encircling Taiwan

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.