Taiwan stays on high alert as Justice Mission 2025 drills ease and Chinese ships pull back
As of December 31, 2025, Taiwan says it remains on heightened alert even as Chinese naval and coast guard vessels begin moving away after the massive Justice Mission 2025 drills.
The overlap between the pullback of Chinese vessels at sea and the ongoing alarm onshore is significant. Beijing can end a drill on paper while keeping pressure in practice. Taiwan’s question is not whether this particular surge is over, but whether it has just become the new baseline.
This piece explains what changed in the last 48 hours, what the drills rehearsed, and why the “calmer” picture can still be the most dangerous part of the cycle.
The story turns on whether Beijing’s pullback is a pause after rehearsing coercion—or the start of a more routine, harder-to-spot squeeze.
Key Points
Taiwan’s emergency military and coast guard response posture remained active on December 31, even as Chinese vessels near the island began to withdraw.
Justice Mission 2025 was one of China’s most expansive drill sets around Taiwan in terms of coverage area, combining naval, air, and rocket-force activity.
Taiwan tracked large numbers of Chinese aircraft and ships during and immediately after the drills, including flights crossing the Taiwan Strait median line.
Beijing framed the drills as deterrence against “Taiwan independence” and external interference, coming shortly after a major U.S. arms package for Taiwan.
Disruption went beyond symbolism: flight routes and maritime traffic were affected, and Taiwan cancelled domestic flights while monitoring the drill zones.
The short-term risk now shifts from “planned escalation” to “unplanned contact”: a collision, misread maneuver, or local commander overreach.
The deeper shift is operational. Repeated drill surges teach Beijing what works, teach Taiwan what breaks first, and normalize coercion for the region.
Background
Justice Mission 2025 unfolded as another step in a pattern that has hardened since 2022: China uses large, tightly messaged exercises around Taiwan to signal capability, impose costs, and shape expectations without crossing into outright war.
Taiwan is a self-governed democracy with its own military, currency, and elected leaders. Beijing claims it as its territory and has not ruled out using force. Taipei rejects Beijing’s sovereignty claim.
The latest drills began on December 29 and escalated on December 30 with long-duration live-fire activity and multi-direction pressure—north, southwest, southeast, and east of Taiwan. The exercise blended the tools of modern coercion: aircraft sorties to tax air defenses, ship presence to threaten a blockade narrative, and rocket launches into surrounding waters to underline reach and tempo.
Timing matters. The drills started shortly after Washington announced a large arms package for Taiwan. Beijing publicly framed the exercise as a warning to Taipei and to foreign actors it believes are enabling Taiwan’s defense posture.
By December 31, Taiwan’s public messaging acknowledged the maritime picture was easing. But the operational response posture stayed elevated, reflecting a reality Taiwanese planners have learned the hard way: the most useful moment for an adversary is often the transition, when attention dips and assumptions creep back in.
Analysis: Justice Mission 2025 drills and Taiwan’s response
Political and Geopolitical Dimensions
The core political logic is deterrence through repetition. Beijing wants Taiwan’s leaders and voters to feel that time is not on their side, and it wants foreign capitals to see Taiwan as a chronic risk that is expensive to support.
Taipei has the opposite incentive. It needs to project calm competence: capable enough to deny coercion, restrained enough to avoid giving Beijing a pretext for further escalation, and steady enough to keep international support from fraying.
The drills also sit inside a wider signalling contest between China and the U.S. and its partners. When Chinese forces simulate blockade conditions, the message is not only “we can reach Taiwan,” but “we can complicate any intervention plan.” Diplomatic choreography followed quickly, which underscores that the conflict is a political contest as much as a military one.
Scenarios to watch:
Return to a “higher normal”: fewer dramatic headlines, but more frequent ship-and-air pressure cycles that keep Taiwan’s forces stretched.
A ladder of timed surges: major drills clustered around political moments—arms deliveries, high-level visits, or election milestones—each one slightly larger.
Quiet through backchannels: lowered operational tempo for a period if Beijing sees more value in diplomacy or economic positioning, without abandoning coercion.
Accident-driven crisis: a midair near miss, maritime collision, or warning shot that forces leaders into rapid decisions under public pressure.
Economic and Market Impact
The immediate economic signal is not “trade stops tomorrow.”. It is that risk premiums creep into the region’s daily plumbing: aviation rerouting, shipping caution, higher insurance sensitivity, and supply-chain managers building in buffers.
Taiwan sits on major air and sea corridors. When drill zones interfere with routes, even temporarily, the costs show up in small ways first: rebooked passengers, delayed cargo, extra fuel burn, disrupted schedules, and tighter operational margins.
The longer-term market impact is psychological. Investors and firms do not need a blockade to start diversifying. They just need a credible sense that disruptions can recur on short notice. That nudges more production redundancy, more inventory on hand, and more emphasis on alternative routing and sourcing—expensive choices that accumulate quietly.
Scenarios to watch:
Operational fatigue costs: repeated rerouting and standby procedures become routine line items for airlines and shippers.
Insurance and financing sensitivity: modest but persistent pricing changes for firms most exposed to cross-strait disruption.
Strategic stockpiling: greater emphasis on energy and critical input resilience, especially where Taiwan relies on imports.
Technological and Security Implications
Data collection, timing rehearsals, and interoperability tests, which are not visible on the front page, play a crucial role in these drills. Large-scale exercises let commanders learn how fast units move, how coordination holds up, and how an opponent responds.
A drill that rehearses elements of a blockade is not just about ships around an island. It is about the full stack: surveillance, targeting, electronic warfare, command-and-control, and the political messaging required to justify pressure while leaving off-ramps.
Taiwan’s response posture—jets, ships, alert centers—also creates learning opportunities for Beijing. Every scramble, every pattern of defensive movement, and every public statement offers clues about thresholds and constraints.
Scenarios to watch:
More complex joint integration: sharper coordination across air, sea, and rocket units, focused on “deny and contain” concepts.
Grey-zone blending: increased reliance on the coast guard and non-navy maritime presence to blur the line between law enforcement and military pressure.
Resilience competition: Taiwan prioritizes dispersal, redundancy, and rapid repair over “matching China ship for ship”, aiming to outlast pressure cycles.
What Most Coverage Misses
The headline is “Ships Pull Back.”. The overlooked story is how pullbacks can be part of the drill. The transition phase tests whether Taiwan relaxes too quickly, whether its alert system can be sustained for days, and whether public attention can be managed without panic or complacency.
Another missed point is that blockade rehearsal is as much about politics as physics. Beijing does not need to stop every ship from exerting pressure. It needs to create enough uncertainty that markets, airlines, and governments start behaving as if a squeeze could happen again at any moment.
Finally, large drills shift expectations. If the region repeatedly accepts major disruption without meaningful cost to Beijing, the exercise itself becomes a tool of policy—less a rare escalation, more a recurring reminder of leverage.
Why This Matters
In the short term, the people most affected are those who live near Taiwan’s ports and air hubs and those whose work depends on predictable routing: airline operations teams, shipping firms, logistics managers, and the small businesses tied to travel flows.
In the longer term, the stakes widen. Every cycle of drills and counter-alerts accelerates a regional adjustment: more defense spending, more diversified supply chains, and more diplomatic energy consumed by crisis management rather than growth.
Next events to watch include:
The first indicators of whether drill tempo truly falls in early January or simply shifts to lower-visibility patterns.
Any new announcements around arms deliveries, sanctions, or additional military training that signal follow-on intent.
Signs of diplomatic coordination among regional players that transition from mere statements to actual changes in posture.
Real-World Impact
A logistics manager at a mid-sized exporter in southern Taiwan watches shipping schedules tighten. Even minor delays force renegotiations with overseas buyers, and the firm pays more for warehousing to buffer uncertainty.
An airline operations planner in Taipei deals with reroutes and knock-on delays. Crew hours, fuel costs, and aircraft rotations become harder to optimize, and customer confidence takes a hit even if safety is not directly threatened.
A procurement lead at an electronics manufacturer in East Asia quietly shifts from “just in time” to “just in case”. It is not a dramatic relocation. This strategy involves maintaining extra inventory, securing backup suppliers, and increasing working capital to enhance resilience.
A small tourism operator in northern Taiwan sees cancellations spike on drill days. The revenue loss is immediate, but the bigger fear is that “drill week” becomes a regular feature of the calendar.
The Road Ahead
For Taiwan, the challenge is stamina without escalation: staying ready, communicating calmly, and building resilience that holds under repeated pressure.
For China, the temptation is to turn drills into governance-by-demonstration—proving that it can tighten or loosen the environment around Taiwan at will and conditioning outsiders to accept disruption as normal.
For the region, the risk sits in the space between routine and crisis. The more often ships and aircraft operate at high tempo in crowded corridors, the more likely a single error becomes a political emergency.
The signs that matter next are practical: whether maritime and air activity stays elevated after the formal drill ends, whether new closure zones appear with little notice, and whether diplomatic signalling is matched by operational restraint—or by the next, larger rehearsal.
