On 29 December 2025, more than 130 Chinese military aircraft and drones filled the airspace surrounding Taiwan. Destroyers, frigates, coast guard vessels, and rocket units were deployed from multiple directions. Seven temporary danger zones were established around the Taiwan Strait. More than 100,000 international passengers were affected by cancellations and flight diversions.
No shells landed on any city. No declaration of war was issued. No invasion took place.
But everyone watching knew precisely what had just happened.
Beijing described the exercise—named “Justice Mission 2025″—as a “stern warning against separatist forces and external interference.” “Yet for anyone who had been observing China’s behavior across the Indo-Pacific throughout 2025, the exercise was considerably more than a warning. It was the most unambiguous demonstration yet of a strategy whose shape has grown steadily clearer: to pressurize, intimidate, and alter facts on the ground without ever triggering the kind of open conflict that would compel the United States and its allies to respond directly.
Through the lens of realism, this strategy is no anomaly. It is a thoroughly rational power calculus from a state that understands precisely the limits of its own capabilities—and precisely how far it can push before the pushing rebounds against it.
Not an Ordinary Exercise
To understand what has changed, one must consider how far China has moved throughout 2025.
The People’s Liberation Army Navy recorded 163 operations in the South China Sea over the course of the year—including a record number of live-fire exercises. China continued to intimidate neighboring states, particularly the Philippines, while shifting its most aggressive actions from Second Thomas Shoal towards Scarborough Shoal. The China Coast Guard more than doubled its presence around Scarborough Shoal compared with 2024.
Around Taiwan, the escalation was even more dramatic. China conducted two major military exercises during the year: Strait Thunder-2025A in April and Justice Mission 2025 in December. Beyond Taiwan, the Chinese navy undertook a series of activities without precedent outside the First Island Chain, including extended voyages and live-fire exercises near Australia and New Zealand.
Justice Mission 2025 was the largest Chinese war exercise ever recorded by geographic scope, conducted closer to Taiwan than any previous exercise. It was designed to practice the rapid encirclement of Taiwan, the neutralization of its defenses, and the blockade of any resupply effort from Japan or nearby American bases.
What distinguished 2025 was not simply the scale. It was the pattern—unrelenting pressure that escalated incrementally each time but was never quite enough to trigger a direct military response.
A Strategy Beneath the Threshold of War
In realist theory, a state that is relatively weaker will not choose open confrontation against a greater power if an alternative path to its objectives exists (Mearsheimer, 2001). China—whose military remains in the midst of modernization and whose economy remains heavily dependent on the stability of global trade—is not comfortably positioned for open war with the United States and its allies today.
But China is equally unwilling to stand still.
The solution is what security studies identifies as a grey zone strategy: coercive actions that fall below the threshold that would trigger a military response but are sufficiently forceful to alter the opposing side’s calculations over time. The blockade exercises around Taiwan, the aggressive patrols in the South China Sea, the coast guard operations bearing down on Filipino fishermen, and the sudden appearance of Chinese naval vessels in the Tasman Sea—all of these are components of the same strategic logic.
The most significant feature of Justice Mission 2025 was that, for the first time, China publicly stated that one of the exercise’s objectives was “deterrence outside the island chain.” This is no longer solely a matter of Taiwan. It is a signal that China is rehearsing the capability to deter foreign intervention across a considerably wider operational radius.
In other words, China is not merely pressing Taiwan. It is sending a message to the United States, Japan, and any other party that might contemplate coming to Taiwan’s assistance.
Every Provocation Has Its Pretext
A consistent pattern throughout 2025 was that each Chinese escalation arrived with a carefully calibrated justification—and that justification was invariably plausible enough to make a firm response politically difficult.
Justice Mission 2025 was launched eleven days after the United States announced an arms sale package worth 11.1 billion dollars to Taiwan, a move that immediately provoked Beijing’s fury and warnings that the Chinese military would “take resolute countermeasures.” Strait Thunder-2025A in April followed Taiwanese President William Lai’s characterization of China as a “hostile foreign power.”
The December exercises came shortly after Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi stated that the Japanese military could become involved should China take action against Taiwan.
On each occasion, China possessed a communicable rationale—not as an aggressor initiating hostilities, but as a party “responding to provocation.” In realist logic, this is a remarkably deft means of maintaining strategic initiative whilst avoiding the label of the party that started any escalation.
President Trump himself responded in notably dismissive terms, remarking that he had not been informed in advance but was “not worried because China has been doing naval exercises in that area for 20 years.” This was precisely the response Beijing sought—that these exercises be regarded as routine, rather than as a fundamental shift in the region’s security dynamics.
The Facts on the Ground, Altered Incrementally
The most dangerous aspect of this strategy is not the military exercises themselves. It is their cumulative effect on what is considered normal in the region.
A decade ago, the presence of Chinese military vessels in the Tasman Sea was unimaginable. In February 2025, a Chinese naval task group—comprising advanced cruisers, frigates, and replenishment ships—sailed into the Tasman Sea between Australia and New Zealand, conducting live-fire drills with minimal prior warning and forcing dozens of commercial flights to alter course. Once the exercises concluded, the Chinese vessels continued their passage around Australia before returning to the South China Sea.
In realist thought, the alteration of facts on the ground is the most tangible form of power. A state that succeeds in redefining what is considered “normal” within a given region has effectively won a portion of the contest without firing a single shot at its adversary (Morgenthau, 1948). China is doing precisely this—advancing the boundary of normalcy one step at a time, calculating that by the time the accumulated weight of those steps becomes fully apparent, it will be too late for others to reverse them.
Responses That Are Always One Step Behind
On the other side, the United States and its allies face a structural problem that is genuinely difficult to resolve: every response to a Chinese provocation risks appearing as a fresh escalation, whilst the Chinese provocation itself can invariably be packaged as a “routine exercise” or a “response to the other side’s provocation.”
Taiwan itself has taken concrete steps — accelerating the development of the “Taiwan Shield” (T-Dome) air defence system, modernising its combat aircraft fleet, and training reserve forces for contingencies previously considered too extreme to plan for.
In the aftermath of Justice Mission 2025, the American Ambassador David Perdue posted a photograph alongside his Australian, Japanese, and Indian counterparts—a signal that the Quad remains united. But there was no sharp statement, no concrete step capable of altering Beijing’s calculus. The asymmetry consistently favors China: it can press forward, whilst others can only prepare. And each time they prepare, China’s position has already advanced another increment.
Escalation Without War: How Long Can It Hold?
The question that remains unanswered is how far this strategy can be sustained before the underlying calculus shifts.
In realist theory, incremental escalation carries its own dangerous internal logic. Each small step that succeeds in pushing the other side back creates an incentive to take the next. And each subsequent step raises the risk that one party misreads the other’s threshold of tolerance—and suddenly, what was designed as pressure below the threshold of war crosses a line that no party intended to cross (Waltz, 1979).
China is aware of this risk. But so long as the grey zone strategy continues to yield strategic gains without commensurate costs, there is no incentive to stop.
What remains for the Indo-Pacific region is a question that grows more urgent with each passing exercise: is this escalation without war a manageable “new normal”—or is it constructing the foundations of a larger conflict that no one, including China, is genuinely prepared to face?
