Opinion | China Ran 19 Drills Near Taiwan. Taipei Disclosed Three.

On July 24, Taiwan's National Security Council Secretary-General Joseph Wu publicly warned that China's People's Liberation Army had conducted simultaneous live-fire exercises across three maritime zones — the East China Sea off Zhejiang, waters east of Dongshan Island in Fujian, and a vast stretch from southeast Hainan to the Paracel Islands — threatening Taiwan, Japan, and the Philippines at once. An independent analysis of Chinese maritime safety records found that 16 additional PLA exercise zones operated that same week, unacknowledged in any official statement.

Lu Wenhao, a researcher at the Chinese Strategic Studies Association, reviewed mainland Chinese media reports and official navigation restriction notices covering July 14–24, 2026. What he found was a far broader picture than Wu's three zones suggested.

The unreported exercises stretched from China's northern coastline all the way down to the South China Sea. In the Bohai Sea alone — China's most enclosed northern inlet — four separate restricted zones near the port cities of Huludao, Qinhuangdao, and Tangshan collectively covered more than 6,000 square kilometers between July 15 and 23. Further south in Shandong's Laizhou Bay, three additional live-fire zones operated on overlapping dates. The Yellow Sea added its own restriction area of 734 square kilometers off Lianyungang on July 22.

The southern coast filled in the rest of the picture. Guangdong's Da'cheng Bay hosted a 136-square-kilometer naval exercise zone on July 18, while Guangxi's Beibu Gulf saw two separate operations — a compact 16-square-kilometer zone on July 20–21, followed by a far larger 1,256-square-kilometer zone from July 23 to 26. Two exercise areas off Hainan, covering 94.6 and 18.5 square kilometers respectively, rounded out the perimeter.

Closer to Taiwan, artillery firing exercises in Fujian's Xinghua Bay — in a 222-square-kilometer zone on July 16 — fell within uncomfortable proximity to Taiwan's outer island of Wuqiu. An additional 36.5-square-kilometer live-fire zone off Zhoushan's Zhongkuai Island, Lu notes, sits squarely within a large "reserved airspace" zone that mainland authorities designated from March 28 to May 6 of this year — a zone Taiwan's National Security Bureau director described in April as designed to test foreign military aircraft movements, primarily American.

In total, Lu identified 19 distinct zones where the PLA conducted military operations in one ten-day window. Only three appeared in Wu's statement.

The exercises east of Dongshan Island attracted the most analytical attention — and for historically grounded reasons. Throughout the era of the former Nanjing Military Region, Dongshan Island served as the PLA's primary combined-arms amphibious assault training ground, the closest such facility to Taiwan's southwestern coast. That tradition has not been retired.

The Eastern Theater Command's 73rd Group Army, headquartered in Xiamen, announced on July 24 that one of its brigades had completed a live naval combat shooting assessment involving amphibious armored vehicles, with at least eight amphibious tanks firing from the water. Separately, state broadcaster CCTV reported that dozens of amphibious armored vehicles from the 72nd Group Army conducted beach-assault formation drills — explicitly described as training for "beachhead landing." The tank landing ship Tiantaishan (hull number 940), identified as belonging to the 5th Landing Ship Squadron of the Eastern Theater Navy's Shanghai base, was the vessel deploying the armor.

Taiwan's Ministry of National Defense tracked 21 PLA aircraft in nearby airspace on July 22, including five sorties that penetrated airspace southwest of Taiwan before turning back. Lu assesses these as advance air cover preparation for the Dongshan operation. On July 24, the Eastern Theater launched a "Joint Combat Readiness Patrol" around Taiwan involving 29 aircraft — 17 of which crossed the Taiwan Strait median line — alongside six warships and five government vessels, with the bulk of combat aircraft concentrated in the airspace southeast of Dongshan Island.

Lu argues this combination of amphibious armor, carrier-based helicopter live-fire assessments, and coordinated air-sea activity is not a provocation in isolation. It reflects the PLA rehearsing multi-arm assault doctrine at a site the Eastern Theater has used for exactly that purpose for decades.

Veteran commentator Chao Shao-kang offered a partial counter-read on July 23, noting that navigation restrictions in the Dongshan area were issued by the Zhangzhou Maritime Safety Administration — a local bureau — rather than the Fujian provincial authority, suggesting the timing was reactive rather than pre-planned. His assessment: the July 21 presence of Pathfinder-class oceanographic survey ship USNS Henson (T-AGS-63) southwest of Taiwan likely prompted a counter-demonstration in that zone. Lu does not dismiss this reading but treats it as complementary rather than contradictory — the amphibious training has a standing institutional logic independent of any one provocation.

The assessment Lu challenges most directly is one gaining momentum in official and academic circles: that PLA military action against Taiwan is unlikely in the second half of 2026 because costs outweigh benefits, and because Taiwan's nine-in-one local elections on November 28 make this an unfavorable window for Beijing to inflame public sentiment.

That logic has a factual basis — but a limited one. Lu compiled a record of PLA military activity during and after Taiwan's nine-in-one elections in 2018 and 2022. The data show the Eastern Theater Command has generally avoided overt interference on election day itself. On November 26, 2022, only four aircraft sorties were recorded — though notably two of those were H-6 strategic bombers. But the pattern after the vote is different. From November 30 through December 25, 2022, PLA ships and aircraft conducted frequent, targeted operations in Taiwan's surrounding waters — a sustained posture that contradicts the "election restraint" narrative when applied to the full post-election window.

More recently, the PLA conducted "Justice Mission-2025" against Taiwan on December 29–30, 2025. This year's election falls on November 28. That leaves all of December — nearly a month — within what historical patterns would flag as a high-risk window.

Lu also points to a structural shift in Beijing's framing. Following former U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's visit to Taiwan in August 2022, the PLA began publicly describing its military operations as targeting "Taiwan independence forces and external interference" rather than any electoral dynamic. That rhetorical separation, combined with the deliberate compartmentalization of political, economic, and military pressure tracks toward Taiwan, suggests Beijing no longer considers the electoral calendar a meaningful constraint on timing.

For the Zhejiang East Sea exercise zone — the largest of the three Wu disclosed, spanning 20,402 square kilometers off Taizhou and Wenzhou — Lu's analysis points toward routine rather than alarm. Comparing the 2026 exercise against three prior iterations — a 24,178-square-kilometer zone in July 2021, a 27,174-square-kilometer zone in September 2023, and a 24,238-square-kilometer zone in July 2024 — Lu finds consistent overlap in timing, geographic footprint, and training profile. These are annual large-scale drills by the Eastern Theater's naval and air forces, used for multi-platform weapons testing and surveillance system evaluations. The 2026 iteration follows the template.

The South China Sea drills off Hainan, covering 54,766 square kilometers, are more directly reactive: the USS George Washington (CVN-73) carrier strike group — comprising the Nimitz-class carrier, Ticonderoga-class guided-missile cruiser USS Robert Smalls (CG-62), and Arleigh Burke-class destroyers USS Benfold (DDG-65) and USS Shoup (DDG-86) — transited the Luzon Strait into the South China Sea on July 22. That same day, the Independence-variant littoral combat ship USS Santa Barbara (LCS-32), Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force Murasame-class destroyer JS Yudachi (DD-103), and Philippine Navy Jose Rizal-class guided-missile frigate BRP Antonio Luna (FFG-15) commenced the 17th Multilateral Maritime Cooperative Activity in the West Philippine Sea. The PLA Southern Theater Command's response was proportionate and geographically logical.

The more significant signal, Lu argues, is what the accumulated evidence suggests about year-end intentions. After "Justice Mission-2025" in late December 2025, the PLA has demonstrated that annual large-scale Taiwan drills now function as a verification mechanism — testing how the Northern and Southern Theater Commands integrate with the Eastern Theater in a coordinated cross-strait scenario. That operational imperative, Lu contends, is no longer calculable in terms of cost or benefit. It is institutionalized.

Between July 25 and 29, the PLA's naval footprint around Taiwan quietly expanded from six to seven vessels, with carrier-based helicopter sorties detected southwest of Taiwan's southern cape — suggesting at least one frigate-class vessel is maintaining continuous deployment in that zone. Taiwan's Han Guang 42 exercise runs August 5–14. Lu expects the PLA to respond with intermittent median-line crossings and probes into Taiwan's restricted flight zones.

One further concern Lu flags: the PLA's July 24 "Joint Combat Readiness Patrol" was launched on the eve of Typhoon Hongxia's approach through the Bashi Strait. He has previously documented a pattern of PLA exercises timed to deteriorating weather conditions as a form of complex-environment combat training. Whether Typhoon Baidunphin — currently tracking toward the western Pacific — prompts a similar operational test in early August remains, in his assessment, an open question worth watching.

*The author is a research fellow at the Chinese Strategic Society.

Original Article in Chinese

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