Chinese Naval Power Puts Taiwan, Japan on Alert

More than 50 Chinese navy and other official vessels operated across waters from southern Japan to Taiwan and off the Philippines, Taiwan National Security Council secretary-general Joseph Wu said on Oct. 28. His map showed 53 ships, including 34 navy warships and the aircraft carrier Liaoning. The sweep put state military power across waters near three places at once.

A map of state power

"We're staying vigilant about their activities," Wu said. "The simultaneous threat to Taiwan, Japan and the Philippines is obvious." The Liaoning and its accompanying battle group were positioned east of the Philippines. Other formations were off Taiwan's east and southeast coasts, while three were off southern Japan, according to Wu's map on X.

Taiwan is stepping up efforts to publish details and maps showing where Chinese warships and Coast Guard vessels operate. Wu posted a similar map in May. The public record now being assembled is a map of military and official vessels moving around Taiwan and its neighbors, while the governments involved stake out competing claims and plans.

Deterrence, answered with deterrence

Taiwan Defence Minister Wellington Koo said on Oct. 29 that his government was "not happy to see any attempt to project deterrence that could undermine peace and stability in the Indo-Pacific region." Speaking to reporters at parliament in Taipei, Koo said his ministry was "maintaining appropriate awareness" of Chinese military warship activity and exchanging intelligence with partners.

Koo also said Taiwan was working to build its own deterrence capabilities. "China has never abandoned the use of force to annex Taiwan," he said. The official response to one state's military presence is therefore another state's preparedness and intelligence-sharing, with ordinary people living under the consequences of decisions made by governments and military institutions. The article describes no grassroots, self-organized or mutual-aid response.

China's defence ministry said in October that the Liaoning was taking part in a routine training exercise not directed at any specific country. China views Taiwan as its territory and recognises no separate sovereignty for the island. Taiwan's government says only the island's people can decide its future and that Beijing has no right to claim it. Those positions leave the people at the center of the dispute surrounded by competing state claims; no electoral or legislative solution appears in the account.

Regional military calculations

Japan's defence ministry said on Oct. 28 that it had tracked three Chinese warships and a Coast Guard ship passing through the Osumi Strait off Kyushu island and into the Pacific a day earlier. The defence ministries of China, the Philippines and Japan did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

China's ties with Japan and the Philippines had deteriorated in recent months, amid China's objections to Japanese support for Taiwan and an increasingly bitter stand-off with Manila in the South China Sea. China has not renounced the use of force to bring Taiwan under its control, while saying it would prefer "peaceful reunification."

The U.S. military newspaper Stars and Stripes quoted Ronald Clark, commander of U.S. Army forces in the Pacific, as saying at a forum in Hawaii on Oct. 27 that U.S. forces had prepared the Indo-Pacific theater on the assumption China could move on Taiwan as early as 2027. The map, the statements and the preparations all describe governments positioning military power around a population whose future each side claims to define.