Taiwan in an Unfolding Crisis: Are We Witnessing a Boiling Frog Scenario?

China’s Latest Military Exercise: The Final Step To Establish ‘CRISIS’ As The New Normal

The PLA followed up the Joint Sword-2024B with another exercise in December 2024, making it a third such large scale Chinese military exercise within a single year. It was conducted by the PLA shortly after Taiwanese President Lai Ching-te visited Hawaii, Guam, and various Pacific Island countries to garner support from internation partners.

As stated earlier, the exercise in question was the largest military exercise by the PLA in nearly three decades, and most notably, was aimed at projecting China’s naval and aerial power all through the South and East China Seas.

While the exercise did not entail live-fire drills like in the Joint Sword 2024-B, the PLA repeated its simulations of attacking foreign ships, blockading sea routes, and inspecting merchant vessels. Another notable feature of this exercise was the PLA’s creation of two barriers southeast of Taiwan in bid to restrict maritime traffic in and out of the First Island Chain.

According to Hsieh Jih-sheng, a senior intelligence officer at Taiwan’s defense ministry, such a large-scale maritime deployment by the PLA was intended to block forces from Taiwan’s regional allies like Japan and the Philippines from coming to the island nation’s rescue in the event of a Chinese military attack against it.

Also, the PLA closed seven airspace zones east of Fujian, Zhejiang, and Jiangsu provinces, which covered an area of more than 800 miles (over 1200 kilometres) ranging from Taiwan’s southwest to its northeast, facing the Ryukyu Islands and Kyushu. While the PLA has closed airspace zones for its drills before, the seven zones closed for this exercise constituted the largest area until then.

Moreover, this exercise did not have any designation and it was unannounced, perhaps in a bid to create an atmosphere of ambiguity in the Taiwan strait, so as to make it difficult for Taiwan and its allies to predict Beijing’s intent.

“Ambiguity creates challenges for Taiwan and neighboring stakeholders, such as Japan, the United States and the Philippines, to know what the Chinese are doing and what’s the best way to respond,” said Stephen Nagy, a professor of politics and international studies at Tokyo’s International Christian University, in a phone interview with Voice Of America (VOA).

So, overall, the PLA has conducted around 5 military exercises within the span of mere two years, of which, each of them has continually moved closer to Taiwan as well as increased in intensity. Also, the China Coast Guard (CCG) has begun playing increasing role in the PLA’s exercises and the last of the aforesaid exercises was not even announced before it occurred.

This is indicative of Beijing’s intention to routinize the PLA exercises as well the CCG’s patrols in the Taiwan Strait to progressively challenge the island nation’s maritime jurisdiction.

Experts also suggest that with its latest exercise that occurred in early December of last year, the PLA could be expected to start maintaining a near constant military presence in the East and South China Sea.

“The People’s Liberation [Army] and Chinese coast guard are so big that they can maintain a constant presence near Japan, the Philippines and Taiwan at the same time,” Drew Thompson, a former Pentagon official and currently a senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore, said in a phone interview with VOA.

“Military operators may have a difficult time discerning when an attack is actually coming when every day looks like an attack,” he further said.

Routinizing its military exercises could allow the PLA to not just steadily advance its preparations for an actual military operation in the Taiwan strait but also make the environment conducive to such an undertaking against Taiwan by gradually eroding the vigilance of the island nation and its allies, who may not be able to decide whether a certain large scale Chinese military activity warrants a major response.

Therefore, the spike in the frequency and overall scope as well as the intensity of Chinese military exercises in the waters surrounding Taiwan in recent years must be looked upon as Beijing’s bid to force the ‘boiling frog syndrome’ upon Taiwan and its allies.

Taiwan Risks Becoming China’s Boiling Frog: Part 3

As discussed earlier, all the exercises conducted by the PLA in waters around Taiwan so far since August 2022 have had an element of continuity in their focus on training for a military operation to reunite Taiwan.

Going by this, experts suggest that the PLA exercises in future should be expected to simulate large scale amphibious assault operations against Taiwan, particularly considering the fact that PLA’s joint readiness patrols often involve the participation of its 5,000-ton-class Type 072 amphibious landing ships.

Moreover, such exercises could also feature special purpose barges that China is said to be building specially for amphibious landings on Taiwanese islands. These barges have been recently seen in Guangzhou Shipyard in southern China, and they have over 120 meters (393 ft) long road bridges extending from their bows, which makes them particularly suitable for an amphibious landing operation against Taiwan, as they can allow the PLA forces to reach a coastal road or hard surfaces beyond a beach.

***BREAKING***#China Suddenly Building Fleet Of Special Barges Suitable For Taiwan Landings #OSINThttps://t.co/W9KuMycnWU

— H I Sutton (@CovertShores) January 10, 2025

These barges are tailor made to operate in poor weather conditions, and evoke memories of the Mulberry Harbours used by the allied forces for their invasion of Normandy during the Second World War.

The conventional understanding about a potential PLA invasion of Taiwan is that there only a handful of beaches on the main Taiwanese island that are suitable for amphibious landings, which makes any landing attempt by the PLA forces predictable, and Taiwan’s armed forces could appropriate its resources in such a way as to heavily defend these particular beaches.

However, the barges recently observed at China’s Guangzhou Shipyard could change that with the extreme reach they provide by enabling the PLA forces to land at locations previously considered unsuitable. 

With their unusually long road bridges, these special purpose barges can allow the PLA to deliver its tanks and other heavy equipment like artillery directly to a coastal road or other hard surfaces across rocky, or soft, beaches.

This means that the use of these special purpose barges in any future PLA military exercise could be considered as a very strong indicator of an impending Chinese military operation against Taiwan, as it would represent a level of preparedness of the PLA forces for a Taiwan invasion scenario that was not expected before.

Therefore, it is not outside the realm of possibility that Beijing could be planning to launch an attack on Taiwan in the near term, not necessarily to reunite Taiwan completely with the Chinese mainland but to occupy one or more of Taiwan’s offshore islands.

The PLA could look to accomplish this by building upon its recent activities, such as by staging a large-scale military exercise as a pretext for an actual military operation, or amassing a large number of coast guard vessels around one of Taiwan’s offshore islands to stretch the Taiwanese coast guard’s resources thin, thereby degrading the island nation’s control over its own waters.

Tanmay Kadam is a geopolitical observer based in India. He has experience working as a Defense and International Affairs journalist for EurAsian Times. He can be contacted at tanmaykadam700@gmail.com.