A report from a Washington think tank recently revealed that the People's Liberation Army may be conducting a large-scale, unannounced "military exercise around Taiwan." National security officials analyzed that this is a "silent intimidation" against Taiwan's nine-in-one elections. It not only wants to create an atmosphere of "military war danger" to exert pressure, but is also afraid of triggering a backlash from international and Taiwanese public opinion. Further analysis from the deployment of combat forces, deeper The first-level attempt was to comprehensively suppress the entire first island chain. The Communist Army not only integrated cross-theater offshore forces to simulate attacks on forces in other areas of the island chain, but also test-fired submarine-launched intercontinental ballistic missiles in early November. The firing logic was highly consistent with that of the Russian military at the end of October, showing that China and Russia are demonstrating cross-theater strategic countermeasures capabilities to the U.S. and the alliance through collaboration.
A report on the situation in the Taiwan Strait released last week by the Institute of War Studies (ISW), a Washington think tank, revealed that the People's Liberation Army recently launched a large-scale, but unofficially announced, "silent exercise" in the Western Pacific and around Taiwan. Through satellite and public intelligence tracking, ISW found that by early November, more than 100 People's Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) and China Coast Guard (CCG) ships were gathering in the Western Pacific to engage in anti-access/area denial (A2/AD) exercises.
National security officials believe that this military operation is a "silent intimidation" against the diplomatic summit and Taiwan's election. It adopts a "substantial troop concentration without an official name" model, just like a robber hiding a gun in a windbreaker, so that the soldiers can be afraid of paying money, but will not trigger the siren and attract a large number of police. China will host the APEC Leaders' Summit next week and will arrange high-level talks with Russia, the United States and even North Korea. If Beijing conducts high-profile military exercises against Taiwan before hosting the international summit, it will inevitably trigger a strong backlash from the international community. It will adopt a "silent" mode that can maintain military deterrence while retaining room for diplomatic maneuvering.
Looking back at the U.S.-China diplomatic schedule in recent years, Beijing is accustomed to using military actions at different levels to increase its leverage through "talk and pressure" before and after high-level U.S. visits to China or heads of state summits. Before U.S. Secretary of State Blinken's visit to China in June 2023, China's Maritime Safety Administration suddenly announced a military exercise in the East China Sea. Two days after the trip, the "Shandong" aircraft fleet sailed south along the west side of the Taiwan Strait in response to the U.S. stance on "peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait." After the Sichuan-Xi meeting in May this year, the People's Liberation Army also dispatched more than 20 combat aircraft and warships to conduct "joint combat readiness patrols" and sent the "Liaoning" to operate in the Western Pacific, showing that Beijing still maintains a high-pressure posture after diplomatic dialogue.
Officials believe that this "silent exercise" is also a precise interference in Taiwan's election and cognitive warfare. On the one hand, Beijing wants to use the "military and dangerous" atmosphere to intimidate the Taiwanese people, and on the other hand, it wants to avoid high-profile military exercises that arouse the resentment of the Taiwanese people. Therefore, as ISW assesses, the non-announcement of the exercise itself is a kind of cognitive warfare, creating an atmosphere of threat from the Communist military and cooperating with Taiwan's internal "war theory" operation, weakening Taiwanese people's confidence in self-defense and their trust in the United States and other allies.
From the perspective of actual deployment and exercise subjects, this "scripted stage encirclement exercise" further exposed Beijing's true intention to project theater-level forces and suppress military force on the entire first island chain. The ISW report shows that the scale of this operation has exceeded the "Justice Mission-2025" exercise, and it is a rare simultaneous coordinated mobilization of surface combat forces in the three major coastal theaters of the east, north and south. Officials believe that this means that China is practicing integrating dispersed regional fleets into a single high-sea combat mission, directly targeting the joint combat environment in the Western Pacific for actual combat verification.
According to official analysis, the track of the "Liaoning" aircraft group since mid-to-late October shows that the PLA naval and air forces frequently cross the first island chain. The exercise scenario not only simulates breaking through the island chain's defense line, but also simulates attacks on forces in other areas of the island chain. It even includes a drill in early November in which China launches submarine-launched intercontinental ballistic missiles from the eastern sea into the inland, with a range covering Hawaii and Guam in the United States. This shows that this exercise is aimed at comprehensive military suppression of the first island chain.
It is worth noting that the firing direction and strategic logic of the PLA's submarine-launched intercontinental ballistic missile are highly consistent with the Russian Pacific Fleet's test-fire of the "Bulava" submarine-launched intercontinental ballistic missile from the Sea of Okhotsk (Pacific side) on October 28, which crossed the Eurasian continent and hit Russia's northwest range. Through collaboration, China and Russia are using cross-theater and long-distance force and firepower projection to demonstrate to the United States and its allies their ability to break geographical blockades and conduct strategic counterattacks in the vast Indo-Pacific theater.
