Beijing’s War Games Encircle Taiwan as Tokyo Sounds Alarm

Midnight sirens on the Taiwan Strait

Off the sleepy port of Keelung, fishermen lit deck lamps before dawn on Thursday and watched gray silhouettes—destroyers, supply tankers, drone carriers—slide past the 24-nautical-mile buffer that Taipei calls its lifeline. By first light, China’s Eastern Theatre Command had announced “Joint Sword-2025,” a 72-hour blockade rehearsal that Beijing says is a direct response to Japan’s new radar station on Yonaguni Island, 110 km east of Taiwan.

Inside the exercise

The drill, larger than the 2022 Pelosi crisis simulations, squeezes the island from six directions. Defense analysts tracking transponder data counted 18 fighter jets breaching the median line before breakfast; coast-guard ships from Fujian province practiced "boarding inspections" on a civilian oil tanker headed for Taichung. Taiwan’s naval command scrambled its own frigates, but kept them just outside artillery range, mindful of President Lai’s order to “avoid the first shot.”

We are not looking for provocation, yet we will not yield an inch of our sea, said Defence Minister Wellington Koo, his voice cracking during a midnight press briefing.

Tokyo’s stake

Japan’s worry is newer: a string of Chinese hypersonic launch sites along its western coast now puts Okinawa, and even Kyushu, within seven minutes of flight time. On Wednesday, Japan’s foreign ministry summoned China’s ambassador for the third time in a month. Sources inside the G-7 talks in Milan say Japan is quietly drafting expanded rules of engagement for its Self-Defense Forces, a move that would scrap the pacifist shackles written into Tokyo’s post-war constitution.

• China’s live-fire zone overlaps Japan’s exclusive economic zone for the first time.
• Beijing’s coast guard has added 40 new cutters since January, satellite images show.
• TSMC shares dropped 3.2 % in early trade on fears of supply-chain disruption.

What happens next

In Washington, the Pentagon extended the deployment of the USS Ronald Reagan carrier group near Guam. On Capitol Hill, senators revived a stalled bill to fast-track $3.5 billion in military credits for Taipei. But it is in Taipei’s night markets, not committee rooms, that the tension feels most real. College students queued at food stalls Thursday night debating whether to join Saturday’s civil-defense drill; older shopkeepers swapped stories of the 1958 shelling, when shrapnel landed in the same alleys now crowded with bubble-tea stands.

Back on the water, the fishermen of Keelung have stopped hauling nets; they sit instead with radios tuned to Coast Guard Channel 16, waiting for the next set of orders—and wondering whether the world’s two largest navies will keep talking, or start shooting.