Thu, Jan 01, 2026 page12

• Notes from Central Taiwan: PRC drills, theater and reality

  As usual, the PRC blames Taiwan and its supporting democracies for its own belligerent choices

  • By Michael Turton / Contributing Reporter
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  The People’s Republic of China (PRC) was out in force in the Taiwan Strait this week, threatening Taiwan with live-fire exercises, aircraft incursions and tedious claims to ownership. The reaction to the PRC’s blockade and decapitation strike exercises offer numerous lessons, if only we are willing to be taught.

  Reading the commentary on PRC behavior is like reading Bible interpretation across a range of Christian denominations: the text is recast to mean what the interpreter wants it to mean. Many PRC believers contended that the drills, obviously scheduled in advance, were aimed at the recent arms offer to Taiwan by the administration of US President Donald Trump, citing PRC noises to that effect. Another denomination of believers contended that they were aimed at the recent remarks on a Taiwan contingency by Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi, again citing PRC noises. Observers noted the irony of the PRC performing military drills in the Strait while accusing Japan of reviving militarism.

  PRC atheists like President William Lai (賴清德), however, avoided the search for meaning and simply criticized the PRC for being “irrational.” The correct move with the PRC is to ignore the noises it makes and avoid repeating them — they are propaganda designed to influence commentary and signal its shills and speakers on what they should be saying.

  

  A ground-to-ground missile is launched by the Second Artillery Force of China’s People Liberation Army in March 1996.

  Photo: Xinhua via AP

  PRC THEATER

  The PRC holds periodic large drills because it wants to intimidate the Taiwanese and shore up support at home. Whenever it does, it uses recent events to construct a narrative explaining its behavior that blames Taiwan and its supporting democracies for its own belligerent choices. Remember that a key goal of PRC propaganda is to transfer the tension it manufactures in its relationship with Taiwan to the Taipei-Washington relationship.

  The PRC’s seemingly inept poster art publicizing the drill were passed around to laughter on many social media platforms. The last four words of the previous sentence are the key: the PRC was leveraging the Streisand effect to get others to stream its propaganda. Beijing wants people to meme the crap out of its hilariously incompetent poster art because then it gets exposure in all sorts of Taiwan-related discourse spaces it otherwise might not, and for a much longer period of time.

  

  Military equipment of the ground forces on Tuesday takes part in long-range live-fire drills targeting waters south of Taiwan, from an undisclosed location in this screenshot from a video released by the Eastern Theatre Command of China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA).

  Photo: Eastern Theatetr Command via Reuters

  Further, hardly anyone remarked on how the PRC was engaging in theater for its own domestic audience. Chinese people are like any other humans and do not want war. The PRC not only has to legitimate a war to its people, it also has to show that it has the willingness, competence and capacity to carry out that war, in order to gain public support for it. It has cultivated nationalist expansionism in its own people for decades, and now it must keep responding to that public sentiment, lest it lose its own people.

  Of course, the usual pro-PRC commentators were out in force blaming the US and Japan for PRC belligerence or deprecating the catastrophic implications of a PRC occupation of Taiwan. Both Jennifer Kavanagh and Stephen Wertheim, who appeared to have been part of a coordinated pro-PRC influence effort ahead of the last meeting between Trump and PRC dictator Xi Jin-ping (習近平) — see “The emerging argument to sell out Taiwan,” Nov. 3, 2025 — made such comments. Kavanagh, for example, observed on X: “A successful Chinese seizure of Taiwan would have little effect on the region’s balance of power.”

  Apparently the last five centuries of leaders grabbing Taiwan and then looking south for further expansion never happened.

  

  A Taiwanese Air Force Mirage 2000 fighter jet on Tuesday approaches for landing as it returns from a mission at an air base in Hsinchu.

  Photo: EPA

  According to this crowd, the US was to blame.

  “Beijing’s explanation for the exercises explicitly cites foreign support for Taiwan separatism,” said Paul Heer, a former US government official.

  Poor put-upon Beijing, the Jessica Rabbit of nations — it’s not evil, it’s just drawn that way.

  INCREASED ACTIVITY

  The drills highlighted the increasing PRC activity around Taiwan. The number of ships and airplanes deployed around Taiwan was double that of the previous two years as of October, Vice Minister of National Defense Hsu Szu-chien (徐斯儉) said on Christmas Day. It is clear that the drills are simply somewhat more visible spikes in an ongoing and steadily rising campaign of incursions and “gray zone” activities, several of which have been in this size class. For example, in October last year incursions by 153 aircraft were tracked in a similar one-day drill scenario, which pro-PRC speakers blamed on a speech by President Lai (there is always something going on that the PRC could be angry about). Similarly, 103 aircraft surrounded Taiwan in September of 2023.

  The size of PRC incursion events ebbs and flows, but is clearly increasing over time as part of a long-standing policy. The fact that observers automatically search for a “reason” for a specific data point in a policy stream that dates back years is of enormous help to the PRC in its quest to camouflage and conceal its behavior. Well-meaning observers should avoid the search for the meaning behind the PRC’s anger. Instead, PRC verbiage should be regarded as an opportunity for its hacks and shills to out themselves by forwarding rationalizations for the PRC’s aggression that blame its victims.

  The drills also had another disinformation function. Jeff Pao observed in a sharp piece at Asia Times that the drills also served the PRC’s information war goal of undermining Taiwan’s faith in its ability to defend itself. He instanced the case of a Chinese military commentator in Italy on YouTube who published a recording of a phone call in which he had been offered a large sum of money to cast doubt on Taiwan’s ability to fight China. One way to do that, the caller suggested, was to criticize Ukraine’s war conduct to show how Taiwan would be punished in a war with the PRC.

  Vice Minister of National Defense Hsu’s remarks came a day after the legislature, controlled by the pro-China parties — the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) — voted against reviewing this year’s government budget, including the NT$1.25 trillion (US$39.71 billion) special defense budget bill. This week, as PRC missiles were landing in Taiwan waters, the KMT and TPP again blocked the special defense budget in committee. Note that several of the systems in the offer from the US that has so “angered” the PRC are paid for out of that budget.

  It is not too late, but the clock is ticking.

  Notes from Central Taiwan is a column written by long-term resident Michael Turton, who provides incisive commentary informed by three decades of living in and writing about his adoptive country. The views expressed here are his own.
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