Beijing’s Military Rehearsals: How China’s 300% Surge in Taiwan Operations Signals a Dangerous Shift
The stark warning delivered by Admiral Samuel Paparo to the Senate Armed Services Committee in April 2025 sent shockwaves through Washington’s defense establishment. China’s military pressure against Taiwan has increased by an unprecedented 300 percent, and according to the commander of U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, these aren’t mere military exercises—they’re full-scale rehearsals for invasion.
This dramatic escalation marks a fundamental transformation in the cross-strait dynamic, one that forces the United States and its Pacific allies to confront an uncomfortable reality: the military balance in the region is shifting, and time may be running out to prevent a catastrophic conflict.
From Intimidation to Invasion Prep
For decades, China’s military posturing around Taiwan followed a predictable pattern of periodic shows of force designed to intimidate the self-governing island that Beijing claims as its territory. Those days are over. What we’re witnessing now represents something far more ominous—a systematic campaign of preparation that bears all the hallmarks of pre-conflict readiness.
The numbers tell a chilling story. In 2024 alone, the People’s Liberation Army demonstrated dramatically enhanced capabilities through what military analysts describe as “persistent pressure operations.” These operations have evolved from occasional incursions into Taiwan’s Air Defense Identification Zone to coordinated, multi-domain exercises that simulate actual combat scenarios.
The drills now regularly involve all branches of China’s military—the army, navy, air force, and rocket forces—operating in concert around Taiwan. These aren’t the improvised displays of previous years. They’re sophisticated operations that test command structures, logistics chains, and coordination between different military services. In military parlance, these are the exact preparations you’d expect to see before launching an amphibious invasion.
The Production Gap That Keeps Pentagon Officials Awake
Perhaps even more alarming than the surge in military activity is China’s industrial capacity to sustain a prolonged conflict. Admiral Paparo’s testimony laid bare a sobering truth: China is outproducing the United States across virtually every critical defense sector, and the gap is widening.
Consider the fighter aircraft production ratio. China manufactures military aircraft at a rate 1.2 times faster than the United States. While this might seem like a modest advantage, in the context of a protracted conflict over Taiwan, it represents the difference between maintaining air superiority and losing it.
The naval imbalance is even starker. China builds combat vessels at a staggering rate of six ships for every 1.8 produced by the United States—more than three times the American output. This industrial dominance has given China the world’s largest navy by hull count, and it continues to expand while the U.S. struggles with aging shipyards, labor shortages, and production bottlenecks.
The missile production differential tells an equally troubling story. China has invested heavily in developing advanced missile systems, particularly anti-ship and ballistic missiles designed specifically to target American carrier groups and bases in the Western Pacific. These weapons, produced at scale, form the backbone of China’s strategy to deny American forces access to the region in the event of a Taiwan contingency.
Space-based capabilities round out China’s military modernization push. Satellites for reconnaissance, communication, and navigation are being launched at an unprecedented pace, giving Beijing the infrastructure needed to coordinate complex military operations across the vast distances of the Pacific.
Strategic Implications for Washington
The 300 percent increase in Chinese military pressure around Taiwan isn’t happening in isolation—it’s part of a coordinated strategy to establish facts on the ground, or in this case, in the waters and airspace surrounding Taiwan. Each exercise normalizes a greater Chinese military presence. Each incursion tests Taiwan’s responses and measures American reaction times.
This strategy of incremental escalation serves multiple purposes. It desensitizes international observers to Chinese military activity around Taiwan, making it harder to distinguish between routine operations and actual preparation for conflict. It exhausts Taiwanese defense forces, who must scramble fighters and activate defense systems for each incursion. And it probes for weaknesses in the American commitment to Taiwan’s defense.
The United States finds itself in a strategic bind. Under the Taiwan Relations Act, Washington maintains a policy of strategic ambiguity—neither confirming nor denying whether it would defend Taiwan militarily. This ambiguity was designed to deter both Chinese aggression and Taiwanese declarations of formal independence. But as China’s military capabilities grow and its operations around Taiwan intensify, that ambiguity becomes increasingly untenable.
Taiwan’s Response and Regional Reactions
Taiwan hasn’t remained passive in the face of this mounting pressure. The island’s annual Han Kuang military exercises have expanded significantly, with the 2025 iteration lasting a full ten days—the longest on record. These drills simulate Chinese invasion scenarios and test Taiwan’s ability to resist an amphibious assault, conduct asymmetric warfare, and maintain command and control under attack.
Taiwan’s defense spending has also increased, though the island faces the same challenge that confronts all of China’s potential adversaries: matching the industrial output of the world’s second-largest economy is simply not possible for a nation of 23 million people. Taiwan’s strategy therefore focuses on asymmetric capabilities—mobile missile systems, naval mines, coastal defense cruise missiles, and preparations for urban warfare that would make any invasion prohibitively costly.
Regional powers are watching nervously. Japan, which has territorial disputes with China and hosts major U.S. military bases, sees Chinese control of Taiwan as an existential threat to its security. The Philippines, caught between its treaty alliance with the United States and its economic ties to China, finds itself on the front line of a potential conflict. South Korea, though geographically distant, understands that a war over Taiwan would fundamentally reshape the Asian security environment.
The European Union, traditionally focused on its own neighborhood, has begun to recognize that stability in the Taiwan Strait is not just a regional issue but a matter of global economic security. Any military conflict that disrupts shipping through the Taiwan Strait would send shockwaves through the world economy.
The Military Balance and the Window of Vulnerability
Defense analysts increasingly speak of a “window of vulnerability” in the Taiwan Strait—a period in which China’s military capabilities have advanced sufficiently to make an invasion feasible, but before the United States and its allies can fully implement countermeasures. Some experts believe we’re entering that window now.
The nonlinear nature of the 300 percent increase in Chinese military pressure suggests Beijing may believe its window of opportunity is opening. Several factors could be driving this perception. China’s demographic challenges mean its working-age population is shrinking, potentially making mobilization more difficult in the future. International sanctions following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine have demonstrated the economic costs of military aggression, but they’ve also shown that determined autocracies can weather such pressure.
Perhaps most significantly, there’s a growing sense within Chinese military and political circles that the United States is distracted and stretched thin. Ongoing support for Ukraine, tensions in the Middle East, and political divisions within America create what Beijing might perceive as favorable conditions for decisive action.
What Comes Next
The trajectory Admiral Paparo described—rising Chinese production capacity, increasing military pressure, and systematic rehearsal for conflict—demands a response that goes beyond rhetoric. The question facing Washington and its allies is whether they can adapt quickly enough to prevent a crisis that would dwarf any conflict since World War II.
Options under consideration range from accelerated military aid to Taiwan and increased presence of U.S. forces in the region to diplomatic initiatives aimed at establishing clearer red lines. Some strategists advocate for ending strategic ambiguity and explicitly committing to Taiwan’s defense, arguing that only certainty can deter Chinese aggression. Others warn that such a move could be dangerously provocative and eliminate diplomatic flexibility.
What’s clear is that the status quo is becoming increasingly unstable. China’s military isn’t just conducting exercises anymore—it’s running through the playbook for an operation that could reshape the global order. The 300 percent increase in military pressure represents not just a quantitative change but a qualitative shift in how Beijing approaches the Taiwan question.
As Admiral Paparo emphasized in his testimony, while China attempts to intimidate Taiwan and demonstrate coercive capabilities, these actions are drawing increased global attention and accelerating Taiwan’s defense preparations. The international community is waking up to the reality that the peace that has prevailed in the Taiwan Strait for seven decades cannot be taken for granted.
The coming years will test whether deterrence can hold in the face of China’s growing capabilities and apparent determination. The military balance is shifting, the rehearsals are intensifying, and the clock is ticking. How Washington, Taipei, and their allies respond to this challenge will determine not just Taiwan’s fate, but the future of the rules-based international order that has underpinned global stability since 1945.
The 300 percent surge in Chinese military operations around Taiwan is more than a statistic—it’s a warning sign that the possibility of conflict, once considered remote, has moved firmly into the realm of strategic planning. The question is no longer whether China is preparing for a possible confrontation over Taiwan, but whether the United States and its allies are preparing adequately to prevent one.
