China announces it has ‘successfully completed’ military exercises near Taiwan

China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) said it has “successfully completed” two days of military exercises in the waters off Taiwan.

The high-powered manoeuvres were aimed at asserting its sovereignty over the island – actions that increased tensions in East Asia during the last days of 2025.

In a New Year’s Eve announcement, the PLA said that the operation it called Justice Mission 2025 had “fully tested the integrated joint operations capabilities of its troops”.

“Always on high alert, the troops of the Theatre Command will keep strengthening combat readiness with arduous training, resolutely thwart the attempts of ‘Taiwan independence’ separatists and external intervention, and firmly safeguard state sovereignty and territorial integrity,” Senior Captain Li Xi, a spokesperson for the PLA’s Eastern Theatre Command, was quoted as saying.

The brief announcement, presented on video accompanied by rousing music, offered no details about what constituted success, nor did it specify exactly when the exercises concluded.

An earlier announcement had said they would take place during Monday and Tuesday, but it was unclear if any lingering drills had continued into Wednesday around Taiwan.

Taiwan has long been China’s most sensitive issue when it comes to the international community.

Beijing has long insisted the island is its sovereign territory and has promised to retake it by force if necessary.

The self-governing island split from the mainland in 1949 after Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalists retreated there upon losing a civil war with Mao Zedong’s communists. That communist government has ruled the rest of China ever since.

Beijing sends warplanes and navy vessels towards the island on a near-daily basis, and in recent years it has stepped up the scope and scale of the exercises.

Chinese President Xi Jinping made a brief reference to the Taiwan situation in an annual New Year’s Eve speech to the nation. He said Chinese people on both sides of the Taiwan Strait share “a bond of blood and kinship”.

“The reunification of our motherland, a trend of the times, is unstoppable,” Mr Xi said.

This week’s military manoeuvres were received in many corners as inflammatory, and China itself acknowledged they were designed to send a message to “external forces” — in short, anyone who might come between its government and the island it prizes.

It has some targets in mind in that respect. In November, the prime minister of Japan said she would not rule out military intervention if Taiwan faced a direct attack by the PLA.

The Japanese Foreign Ministry said on Wednesday that China’s military exercises around Taiwan is “an act that escalates tension in the Taiwan Strait” and that it has conveyed the concern to Beijing.

“Japan expects the issues surrounding Taiwan to be resolved peacefully through dialogue, which is a position that the Japanese government has consistently maintained all along,” it said in a statement. “The peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait are important for the entire international community. Japan continues to watch the related development with strong interest.”

And in mid-December, the United States announced a package of arms sales to Taiwan that, if approved by Congress, would represent the largest such aid to the island ever — a move criticised sharply by China.

In the Philippines, which has intermittent disputes with China over other territory in the South China Sea, defence minister Gilberto Teodoro Jr said he was “deeply concerned by China’s military and coastguard actions around Taiwan”, saying they undermine stability “in an already fragile geopolitical environment”.

“This heightened scale of coercion has implications that extend beyond cross-Strait relations and into the broader Indo-Pacific community,” Mr Teodoro said. “Basic principles of self-restraint must be observed.”

Earlier this week, US President Donald Trump said he was not concerned because he has a good relationship with Mr Xi and China has been “doing naval exercises for 20 years in that area”.