China’s increasing incursions into Taiwan’s airspace and its military activities near the island have drawn international attention.
Taiwan recently confirmed that Chinese military drills near the island had intensified, aimed at keeping up pressure on the island’s democratically elected government. Indeed, China’s most advanced carrier, the Fujian, which was recently inducted into service, sailed through the Taiwan Strait a few days back.
China’s intensifying military activities near Taiwan have raised concern in the U.S., which urged China to “exercise restraint, cease military pressure against Taiwan and, instead, engage in meaningful dialogue,” State Department spokesperson Tommy Pigott said in a statement.
U.S. strategic experts believe that Chinese pressure on Taiwan is likely to increase after the U.S. administration announced an $11 billion arms package to bolster Taiwan’s defense needs against China’s aggressive posturing aimed at reunifying the island with the mainland.
The U.S. arms package consists of 82 HIMARS rocket artillery systems and related equipment, valued at $4.05 billion, including 420 ATACMS missiles having a range extending up to 300 kilometers (186 miles), and also unmanned surveillance systems and military software. The package also includes 60 M109A7 self-propelled howitzer systems and related equipment with a value exceeding $4 billion, besides the Javelin and TOW anti-tank missiles worth over $700 million.
The U.S. arms package drew a swift Chinese reaction, with its Foreign Ministry spokesperson Guo Jiakun slamming the U.S. for violating its commitment to the one-China principle. Guo said that the U.S. “will only end up harming itself” by backing Taiwan with the arms sales, warning that any attempt to use Taiwan to contain China “is doomed to fail."
Taiwan argued that the arms sale came under the $40 billion supplementary defense budget recently announced to improve its combat readiness by 2027.
China has been warning against Taiwan’s moves. Beijing considers Taiwan as part of its territory, with Chinese President Xi Jinping recently calling Taiwan’s reunification with China a “historical inevitability,” which Taiwan has rejected.
U.S. strategists, analyzing U.S. calculations behind the arms package, believe that President Donald Trump’s approval of the package was to enable Taiwan to have some deterrence capability against China; though Trump was equally interested in continuing trade with China, including in semiconductors, he would also not allow China to attack Taiwan.
While the U.S. has no formal mutual defense treaty with Taiwan and, in effect, no obligation to defend the island, it passed the Taiwan Relations Act in 1979, which stipulates that Washington would “make available to Taiwan such defense articles and defense services” needed by Taiwan to maintain “sufficient self-defense capabilities.”
Reacting to the arms package, China imposed sanctions against 20 U.S. defense-related companies and 10 executives; the sanctions range from freezing the companies’ assets in China and banning individuals and organizations from dealing with them, the Chinese foreign ministry said.
The companies include Northrop Grumman Systems Corp., L3 Harris Maritime Services and Boeing in St. Louis; Palmer Luckey, founder of defense company Anduril Industries, is among those executives sanctioned against doing business in China and banned from entering the mainland.
A few weeks back, China and its diplomats based in Japan mounted severe criticisms against Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi, who stated that any mainland attempt to forcibly seize Taiwan could trigger Japan’s Self-Defense Forces to intervene.
China’s aggressive "wolf-warrior diplomacy" was evident in its reaction to Takaichi’s remarks. Indeed, a stern-looking Chinese foreign minister, Wang Yi, said that China “must resolutely hit back ... not only to safeguard its sovereignty and territorial integrity but also to defend the hard-won postwar achievements secured with blood and sacrifice.”
Chinese and Japanese ships have also been involved in a tense encounter near the Senkaku Islands; Tokyo has lodged protests against Chinese fighter jets directing fire-control radars at Japanese aircraft near Okinawa. Chinese media called on Takaichi to retract her “misguided remarks,” which could lead to reviving militarism that could threaten regional peace.
There has also been economic fallout. China, Japan’s second-largest export destination, absorbing Japanese exports estimated at over $125 billion in 2025, abruptly postponed the release of two Japanese films and canceled several Japanese musical performances. There has also been a substantial decline in Chinese tourism inflow into Japan, a huge market for Chinese tourism. China has also imposed a ban on Japanese seafood imports.
Japan, keen to extinguish the diplomatic fire in bilateral relations, has offered to hold a dialogue with China, with Takaichi saying her remarks were “hypothetical” and that Tokyo wants to build a constructive and stable relationship with an important neighbor like China.
However, some Chinese strategists say that Takaichi’s remarks signaled a willingness to support Taiwan’s assertion for greater sovereignty, and challenged Beijing’s insistence that the Taiwan issue was a purely internal Chinese matter. But even on a hypothetical basis, Takaichi’s remarks have raised the possibility that regional power could be drawn to counter Chinese aggression. China’s aggressive posturing under Xi has led to considerable unease among the neighbours.
Takaichi’s remarks prompted China’s ambassador to the United Nations, Fu Cong, to send a formal complaint to the U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres, explaining China’s position on Takaichi’s remarks, which “... seriously undermine the postwar international order, and represent an open provocation ... to the peoples of other Asian countries that once suffered from Japanese aggression.”
The Tokyo-Beijing spat has also highlighted the unease felt in many Asian countries – ranging from India, which has had border clashes with China in the Himalayas, to the Philippines, Japan and other “silent” but unnerved countries such as Vietnam, South Korea, and potentially, also Australia. Will this lead to new members joining regional groupings and alliances such as Quad or the AUKUS? One cannot rule out such a possibility.
A conflict over Taiwan could easily escalate into a major war involving several players. As the Russia-Ukraine war has shown, conflicts are often difficult to stop once they begin. And none of the players in the region, including China, can afford to have a prolonged war without sustaining huge economic losses, disrupting the development trajectory and creating other acute problems, not to forget the human suffering wars can inflict.
