China’s “Justice Mission-2025” Encirclement Drills Trigger Global Rebuke and Taiwan’s 5-Year Defence Surge

Beijing’s barrage echoes the 1995-96 Third Taiwan Strait Crisis, when missiles also bracketed the island to deter a pro-sovereignty candidate; the difference three decades later is the PLA’s capacity to sustain multi-domain, multi-day encirclement. The episode fits a long arc: from the 1954 & 1958 Quemoy shellings, through the 1979 U.S. Taiwan Relations Act, to today’s competition where great-power signalling relies more on grey-zone pressure and economic coercion than outright invasion—yet each drill normalises a new baseline of PLA presence. Over a century horizon, whether Taiwan can remain de-facto autonomous hinges less on any single volley than on cumulative shifts in regional alignments, defence industrial capacity, and domestic political cohesion on both sides of the Strait; this week’s rocket trails are another data point in that slow, structural contest.