Researchers at the American Enterprise Institute and the Institute for the Study of War say China's military may be running an undeclared far-seas exercise larger than last year's Justice Mission 2025 drills, with more than 100 People's Liberation Army Navy and China Coast Guard vessels operating around Taiwan and deep into the western Pacific.
The assessment, released Friday, leans on vessel-tracking data and public remarks by National Security Council Secretary-General Joseph Wu, who told lawmakers last week that Chinese hull counts in the region had crossed triple digits—a level Taipei watches as a rehearsal for cutting sea lanes toward Guam and Japan.
Two clusters around the island
The report describes two main concentrations. One groups at least four task forces from the eastern, northern, and southern theater commands between Taiwan and Guam, including the Liaoning carrier strike group that transited toward the Pacific through the Basilan Strait in the Philippines in late October.
The second wraps the island itself, with at least six coast-guard ships and an unspecified number of navy escorts inside the first island chain. Analysts said the pattern mirrors isolation operations—blocking resupply corridors rather than staging a single day of air incursions.
Air sorties paired with the fleet
Taiwan's Ministry of National Defense logged 49 Chinese military aircraft around the island on Monday, including 36 sorties south of Taiwan that the think-tank authors believe supported the distant task groups. The ministry has not publicly labeled the movements a named exercise, which keeps Taipei balancing disclosure against escalation messaging.
What Taipei is watching
Lawmakers from both the ruling and opposition camps asked Wu whether the PLA is simulating a blockade of energy imports and semiconductor exports. He stopped short of using that word but said the navy and coast guard were "testing coordination" across theater commands—language Taiwan's military uses when exercises lack an official title from Beijing.
The Presidential Office reiterated that any unannounced drill would be met with surveillance flights and port checks, not public protest alone. Coast Guard Administration cutters have shadowed Chinese law-enforcement ships near the median line while the navy tracks the Liaoning group east of the Philippines.
Next signals
Defense analysts in Taipei say the drill's size matters more than duration: if the western Pacific deployment stays above 80 hulls through the week, resupply planners in Tokyo and Washington will treat it as a new baseline. If the fleets disperse without an official PLA announcement, the episode may join a growing list of gray-zone maneuvers that stop just short of a named crisis.
Export regulators in Hsinchu said they had not issued new shipping advisories for chip foundries but were sharing vessel-location feeds with coast-guard liaison officers hourly. A foreign ministry spokesperson urged like-minded partners to keep transit lanes open under international law, without citing any specific sanction measure under review.