China’s Joint-Sword B drill is a strategic continuation of
The exercise, however, appeared less escalatory than expected. Beginning at 5am, the PLA Ground Force, Navy, Air Force and Rocket Force as well as the CCG conducted drills that lasted 13 hours. The PLA deployed 153 aircraft, with 111 crossing the median line. This is the most recorded in a single day and significantly greater than the 111 aircraft deployed during the Joint Sword-2024A exercise that took place between 23 and 24 May.
Fourteen PLA Navy ships (including the Liaoning carrier strike group), 17 CCG and 12 government vessels also participated in the exercise, representing a smaller naval presence than the 46 vessels the PLA deployed during 2024A. In contrast, the CCG’s contribution increased to 17 vessels from 9. Its activities were also less conservative than in 2024A, with the vessels encircling the entire island rather than primarily focusing their efforts around eastern Taiwan. No vessels, however, entered Taiwan’s territorial waters, although activity took place in the restricted waters around Matsu and Dongyin islands (but notably not around Kinmen, despite a spate of incursions around it in recent months). In addition, no live-fire activity was discernible as a direct part of the drills.
Sending strategic signals
The exercise seems to have been pre-planned and deliberately limited in scope. It was likely intended to serve two purposes: to showcase elements of the PLA’s capability development and to act as a political signal to external and domestic audiences. Significantly, it emphasised China’s ability to blockade Taiwan’s airspace.
China will have considered two options for this exercise: the first is to escalate vertically and risk increasing tensions to the point of sparking a crisis; the second is to expand activity horizontally in new ways. 2024B seems to reflect the latter. Interestingly, while 2024A staged activity across Taiwan’s main naval bases and ports, the 2024B exercise involved activity across Taiwan’s main air bases. 2024B thus allowed the PLA to practice different capabilities that would enable a potential future blockade or economic quarantine. Indeed, for the first time in such an exercise, China spread disinformation that gas shipments were not being delivered to Taiwan because of PLA activities, despite no trade in or out of Taiwan being disrupted.
This horizontal escalation contrasts with the increasingly aggressive non-military actions carried out by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to deter and weaken Taiwan, initially beginning after former Unites States house speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taipei in 2022 and intensifying following 2024A. In June, China announced a new interpretation to the 2005 Anti-Secession Law known as the ‘22 Articles’ that imposed criminal punishment on advocates of ‘Taiwan independence’. The articles were significant not only because they outlined – for the first time – the precise crimes of secession that China would punish, but also because the amendments’ extraterritorial application threatened both Taiwanese and non-Taiwanese citizens. China proceeded to list ten current and former officials in Taiwan as ‘diehard separatists’ and urged people to report their crimes.
In addition, there has been a notable increase in the number of Taiwanese citizens detained in China in recent months. In September, a senior executive at Formosa Plastics Group was banned from leaving China, while multiple visitors from Taiwan have had their electronic devices seized and faced hours-long interrogations at Chinese airports. These measures amount to a significant escalation in China’s legal warfare against Taiwan. China has also escalated its grey-zone activities in the Taiwan Strait, with the number of incursions committed by CCG vessels having increased to a total of 44 this year. Incursions into Kinmen’s protected waters have become more regular, occurring on average five times per month between February and September.
Preparing future battlefields
Since 2024A China has thus escalated tensions and diversified its actions in several areas while deliberately avoiding vertically escalating its military exercises. This is likely for two reasons. Firstly, because a military vertical escalation during 2024B may have risked a crisis which threatened China’s ability to ensure a favourable environment for any future actions against Taiwan. The PLA believes warfighting success comes from its ability to scientifically and precisely manage escalation – a concept known as ‘war-situation control’ (控制战局). This control requires the creation of a ‘good situation’ before the outbreak of war.
According to the PLA, engineering a good situation on ‘future battlefields’ requires the ‘interweaving of military, political, diplomatic and public-opinion fields’ to secure the ‘political, moral and legal commanding heights’. Intensified activity in other domains since 2024A has worked towards securing these ‘commanding heights’, whereas any military tensions or crisis following 2024B would have threatened the ‘good situation’ that the PLA wishes to create. As the PLA continues to use military exercises as a tool of influence and coercion, its actions are likely calibrated to ensure that future vertical military escalation is still possible.
Secondly, these military exercises exist within the CCP’s wider Taiwan strategy that still holds open the possibility for ‘peaceful reunification’, however small it may be. Three days after 2024B, China’s official newspaper delivered a deliberate reminder of this policy. On its front page, the People’s Daily reported that President Xi Jinping had visited Fujian province between 15–16 October, where he promoted the building of a ‘demonstration zone for cross-strait integrated development’. This was both a signal internally and to Taiwan to encourage provincial officials to devise more initiatives for economic and legal cross-strait integration, as well as building shared infrastructure. Any dramatic vertical escalation would have undermined the practice and presentation of this element of China’s Taiwan strategy.
The horizontal diversification of action and heightened efforts in several domains between 2024A and 2024B illustrates the CCP’s guiding principles towards Taiwan. China wishes to remain in control of the situation to cultivate a cross-strait environment that is beneficial to its future aims while also retaining multiple options for future action that range from ‘peaceful reunification’ to grey-zone activities or full-scale conflict. China’s actions in the five months since 2024A suggests it is ensuring its future readiness for multiple options and has not yet decided which one to take.
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