China’s Military Exercises: Outrageous Acts Escalate Tensions in Taiwan Strait

Editorial

15:37 JST, December 30, 2025

China, which has been intensifying its opposition to Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s Diet response regarding a possible Taiwan contingency, has begun large-scale military exercises around Taiwan.

It is unreasonable to threaten regional stability while using remarks by Japan’s prime minister and others as an excuse, and China should stop its dangerous intimidation.

The Chinese military’s exercises, dubbed “Justice Mission 2025,” which started on Dec. 29, have established five exercise areas to encircle the entirety of Taiwan. They reportedly include drills for blockading key ports, and live-fire exercises have already been conducted.

A Chinese military spokesperson asserted that the exercises’ purpose is a “stern warning against ‘Taiwan Independence’ separatist forces and external interference.” In addition to the administration of Taiwan President Lai Ching-te, of which China takes a hostile view as being pro-independence, the obvious intent of the exercises is to hold Japan and the United States in check while avoiding naming them directly.

Chinese President Xi Jinping’s administration conducted large-scale military exercises that encircled Taiwan in 2022 in response to then U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan. Since that time, it has repeatedly held similar exercises under various pretexts. The exercises this time followed ones held in April this year.

China unilaterally condemned Takaichi’s remarks as “serious risks to peace in Asia and globally.” It also intensified economic coercion by urging Chinese people to refrain from visiting Japan and halting imports of Japanese seafood.

In early December, China escalated its provocations, including Chinese military aircraft directing radar at Self-Defense Forces planes.

Engaging in intimidation by military force — simply because Beijing dislikes Takaichi’s remarks — is an act based on an unreasonable accusation. By doing so, China itself appears to prove that it is the one escalating tensions.

China has also opposed the approval by the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump in mid-December of one of Washington’s biggest-ever arms sales to Taiwan, worth about ¥1.7 trillion in total. China criticizes this as “disrupt[ing] peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait.”

However, the facts that China does not rule out the possibility of unifying Taiwan by force and repeats its acts of military intimidation are instead destabilizing the region.

China should recognize that such self-serving behavior causes distrust among countries concerned, such as Japan and the United States, further highlighting its own peculiarity in the international community.

If China were to invade Taiwan by force, danger would inevitably extend to Japan’s Nansei Islands. China Coast Guard vessels already have regularly intruded into Japan’s territorial waters around the Senkaku Islands in Okinawa Prefecture.

Japan and the United States need to cooperate to conduct a detailed analysis of the exercises’ content and use it to enhance the joint response capabilities of the SDF and the U.S. military based in Japan.

(From The Yomiuri Shimbun, Dec. 30, 2025)