Taiwan Officials Call China’s Unannounced Pacific Drills ‘Silent Intimidation’ as About 70 Vessels Remain at Sea

Featured image: The Chinese aircraft carrier Liaoning in Hong Kong waters in July 2017 (file photo; not this month’s drills). Photo: Baycrest, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.5. Cropped to 16:9.

Taiwan officials said this week that China staged unannounced China Pacific drills around Taiwan and across the western Pacific in early November, in what a senior Taiwan security official called “silent intimidation.” Reuters reported those remarks from Taipei on Nov. 13, 2026.

Defense Minister Wellington Koo said the same week that China was conducting “area denial” drills in the western Pacific, including the Liaoning carrier strike group. About 70 vessels were still operating inside the first island chain on Friday, two Taiwan security officials told Reuters, after a peak the officials put at more than 100 ships earlier in the month.

Peak and Friday vessel counts are from Taiwan officials quoted by Reuters. The sortie and daily ship figures are from Taiwan’s Ministry of National Defense. Neither set is an independent tally, and Beijing has not confirmed the larger vessel numbers.

What Taiwan says the unannounced drills are for

A senior Taiwan security official, speaking to Reuters on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter, said China’s military and coast guard had at one point massed more than 100 vessels in the region early this month. The official said the drills included simulated attacks on other militaries and on cities, including Taiwan’s, and described the naval deployment as larger than “Justice Mission 2025,” China’s last formally named drills aimed at Taiwan nearly a year ago, and as one of the largest Chinese naval deployments to date. “It is a silent exercise — and in effect, silent intimidation,” the official said.

Those details come from a single unnamed official and have not been independently confirmed in the material reviewed for this article. They should be read as Taiwan’s account, not as an established order of battle. What is on the public record from named officials is narrower and still significant. Taiwan’s defense ministry pointed Reuters to Koo’s comments that China was carrying out area-denial drills in the western Pacific involving an aircraft carrier and other naval formations. Joseph Wu, secretary-general of Taiwan’s National Security Council, said on Nov. 12 that the number of vessels had decreased since Nov. 3, but that groups from the Eastern, Northern and Southern Theater Commands, plus the Liaoning carrier strike group, remained in waters east of the Philippines. The Institute for the Study of War, citing Wu, said the movements still amounted to a close encirclement of Taiwan with significant surface forces between Taiwan and Guam.

The activity is a continuation of a deployment The Boston Report has already documented in parts. On Oct. 28, Wu published a map of 53 Chinese vessels, 34 of them navy ships, from southern Japan to the Philippines. On Nov. 3, Taiwan tracked 49 Chinese military aircraft around the island, the most it had reported this year. This week’s reporting is about the scale and duration of the wider, still-unnamed exercise, and about Taipei’s decision to describe it as area denial and silent intimidation, not about those earlier daily counts alone.

By the numbers: air sorties fell, the local ship count did not

Taiwan’s Ministry of National Defense publishes a daily count of People’s Liberation Army aircraft and ships detected around Taiwan in the 24 hours to 6 a.m. Taipei time. In the window from Nov. 12 to Nov. 13, it reported 30 PLA aircraft sorties, 8 PLA Navy ships and 3 official ships; 23 of the 30 sorties crossed the median line of the Taiwan Strait and entered Taiwan’s northern, central, southwestern and eastern air defense identification zone. The next day, the ministry reported 10 sorties, with 4 crossing the median line into the central, southwestern and eastern ADIZ, and the same 8 navy ships and 3 official ships. In the 24 hours to 6 a.m. on Nov. 15, it reported 1 sortie, which entered the eastern ADIZ, and again 8 navy ships and 3 official ships. The Nov. 15 statement did not say that the single sortie crossed the median line. In each case, Taiwan said it responded with combat air patrol aircraft, navy ships and coastal missile systems.

By The Boston Report’s calculation from those three official windows, aircraft sorties fell 96.7%, from 30 to 1, in two days, while the ministry’s count of navy and official ships around Taiwan did not change. The stable 8-plus-3 figure is a local count around the island. It is not a contradiction of the larger “about 70” and “more than 100” vessel numbers, which Taiwan officials applied to a wider operating area inside the first island chain and, earlier, across the region. The daily MND series also does not cover the Liaoning group’s reported position east of the Philippines, which would sit outside a tight “around Taiwan” tally. The useful comparison is the one the ministry’s own tables support: flights near Taiwan dropped sharply after midweek; the nearby ship count, in this series, did not.

Beijing’s account, and what remains unverified

China, which views democratically governed Taiwan as its own territory and has never renounced the use of force to bring the island under its control, has described the Liaoning’s voyage as routine training that is not directed at any country, Reuters reported. The Chinese Defense Ministry used that “routine” formulation on Oct. 14, ISW noted, and did not separately announce the other large task forces operating east of Taiwan. On Thursday, Nov. 12, Xi gave a major policy speech about Taiwan in which he urged peaceful “reunification” and made no mention of using force, Reuters reported.

Global Times, a Chinese state-owned tabloid, published an editorial on Nov. 11 that criticized reports of a major unannounced exercise, including an ISW assessment issued on Nov. 6. The editorial called PLA activity and China Coast Guard patrols around Taiwan “legitimate arrangements within China’s sovereignty” and said the PLA was moving from “periodic” to “around-the-clock” operations, which it described as routine. !Unverified claim, Global Times (Chinese state media) ISW noted that the editorial did not deny the presence of major PLA forces around Taiwan. Those are political characterizations from a state-controlled outlet, not an independent confirmation or denial of the vessel counts.

Other claims in the Reuters account remain unverified outside Taiwan official statements. The same unnamed official told Reuters that a Chinese submarine launched an intercontinental ballistic missile from the Yellow Sea into the Chinese mainland during the latest drills. No independent confirmation of that launch appeared in the sources reviewed for this article, and it is not treated here as an established fact. ISW, for its part, assessed that the People’s Republic of China is “very likely” continuing a major unannounced exercise that simulates isolating Taiwan from outside intervention, and that the Liaoning group had been at sea for a month as of Nov. 13, with other surface forces at sea for at least two weeks. ISW also said Japanese Ministry of Defense releases indicated that PLA forces likely practiced escorting large sustainment vessels through the Miyako Strait toward the western Pacific on Nov. 2 and Nov. 12. Those are ISW’s assessments, based on the sources it cites, not firsthand Boston Report observations.

What the week leaves in public view

The public record, as of Nov. 15, is that Taiwan’s defense minister has described ongoing western Pacific activity as area-denial drills involving a carrier group; that Taiwan’s national security adviser has said theater-command formations remain east of the Philippines even after the vessel count declined from a Nov. 3 peak; that unnamed officials told Reuters the earlier mass was larger than Justice Mission 2025 and was meant as silent intimidation ahead of major international meetings in the Asia-Pacific; and that Beijing has called the Liaoning’s operations routine. The ministry’s own daily tables show air activity near Taiwan falling off late in the week while the local ship count held at 8 navy vessels and 3 official ships. A combat-readiness patrol in mid-October was a one-day spike. This deployment, by Taipei’s account, has lasted much longer than that and has not been given a formal exercise name.

Sources

• Reuters, via Investing.com: “China stages unannounced Pacific drills in ‘silent intimidation’ of Taiwan, officials say,” Nov. 13, 2026
• Institute for the Study of War: “China & Taiwan Update, November 13, 2026”
• Taiwan Ministry of National Defense: PLA activities, 6 a.m. Nov. 12 to 6 a.m. Nov. 13, 2026
• Taiwan Ministry of National Defense: PLA activities, 6 a.m. Nov. 13 to 6 a.m. Nov. 14, 2026
• Taiwan Ministry of National Defense: PLA activities, 6 a.m. Nov. 14 to 6 a.m. Nov. 15, 2026