In the second of a three-part series on mainland China’s increasing military presence around the self-governed island, SCMP's Hayley Wong looks at how the People’s Liberation Army has been stepping up its efforts away from the Taiwan Strait.
To city dwellers and tourists in Taiwan, the island’s eastern coast is all about pristine mountains, deep gorges, and vast, scenic views of the Pacific Ocean that stretch uninterrupted towards Guam, 2,900km (1,800 miles) away.
To the Taiwanese military, the island’s east has long been considered a safe haven – with the natural barriers of terrain and its position at the furthest reach from mainland China’s looming military pressure on the western coast, facing the Taiwan Strait.
But while Beijing continues to concentrate its efforts in the strait, the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) appears to be changing the dynamic – adding a twist this year with more reconnaissance and strategic efforts on the island’s far side.
Over the past 18 months, the PLA has deployed more helicopters, combat aircraft and drones to the island’s eastern seaboard, according to data compiled by the South China Morning Post from the Taiwanese defence ministry’s daily reports.
The ministry provides details of the number of PLA aircraft and vessels near Taiwan every day, including the number of aircraft entering Taiwan’s de facto air defence identification zone, and the activity areas of different aircraft types.
The number of PLA warplanes involved in operations covering Taiwan’s east, including the southeast and northeast coasts, reached 119 in July – almost three times the highest monthly total recorded over the summer, which was in September.
On the water, there have been local reports of increased PLA Navy missions – which have also departed from past practices – off Taiwan’s east coast.
The increasing PLA activity to the east of the island has added to the heightened tensions that have marked cross-strait relations since Taiwanese leader William Lai Ching-te took office in May.
It has also challenged the traditional belief that Taiwan’s east is the “safe” side of the island, a guarded back door facing the US bases in the region and with seas deep enough to accommodate large submarines.
Experts say the eastern-focused operations have also made the PLA capable of gathering greater strategic information and conducting tactical preparations on the east side of the island, in preparation for diverse scenarios in Taiwan.
According to the analysts, the PLA’s plans could include landing operations and strikes on Taiwanese submarines, as well as counter-intervention tactics that may apply in a war scenario.
PLA drones were deployed to operations covering the east of Taiwan on 20 days between June and September this year, compared to eight days in the same period of 2023, Taiwanese defence ministry data shows.
Helicopters form another pillar of the pressure the PLA is applying from the island’s east, appearing more frequently than drones and combat aircraft in that area.
Most of the helicopters recorded from June to December last year – the Taiwanese authorities stopped reporting on aircraft models in January – were anti-submarine variants, including the medium-sized ship-based Z-8 and the multi-role Z-9.
The PLA forces usually hold their combined exercises in summer and this year’s drills featured an almost tripling of the number of days helicopters were deployed to operations covering the east of Taiwan.
Chang Yen-ting, a former deputy commander of the Taiwanese air force, believes that mainland forces have been using drones – a longer-range option than fighters – to carry out reconnaissance operations on the other side of the island from the Taiwan Strait.
According to Chang, the helicopters were probably conducting anti-submarine exercises after being transported to the eastern side of Taiwan on board PLA naval vessels.
“As the depth of the sea in Taiwan’s east is enough for submarines to [operate] in the water, they had to come to this side to conduct underwater anti-submarine exercises,” he said.
Any underwater combat in a conflict over the island would be concentrated on its eastern side, with depths of at least 4,000 metres (13,100 feet) – compared to an average of just 60 metres in the Taiwan Strait.
For this reason, the eastern side of the island had become “Taiwan’s focus for force protection and preservation of combat power” against PLA drones and helicopters, Chang said.
Beijing considers Taiwan as part of its territory, to be reunified with the mainland by force if necessary. Like most nations, the US does not recognise the island as an independent state. However, Washington is opposed to any unilateral change to the status quo.
The US is also Taiwan’s main weapons supplier and has pledged to provide the island with the arms necessary for its defence.
In November, the US deployed one of its newest nuclear-powered, fast-attack submarines to Guam, in what the US Navy described as its “strategic laydown plan for naval forces in the Indo-Pacific region”.
The USS Minnesota is the first Virginia-class vessel to be based at the strategic military outpost, alongside Submarine Squadron 15’s fleet of Los Angeles-class fast-attack submarines, all of which were commissioned in the early 1990s.
According to a report published by Beijing-based defence consultancy Lande in November, the US has some 13 Los Angeles-class attack submarines stationed in the Indo-Pacific region.
Last year, Taiwan debuted its prototype Hai Kun-class submarine and pledged to build seven indigenous attack submarines over the next 14 years.
Lande also noted “continuous progress” in Taiwan’s underwater defence programmes, including its advanced sonar range prediction system and unmanned underwater vehicles, thanks to US support, but combat capabilities remained insufficient against the PLA.
Lyle Goldstein, director of the China Initiative at Brown University’s Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs, warned that the PLA would “go where nobody thinks they can go” in the event of a full-scale assault on Taiwan.
Elements of helicopter use could be “incredibly decisive” in a possible conflict, said Goldstein, who is also director of Asia engagement at Washington think-tank Defence Priorities.
While helicopters were “generally the most effective ways to attack submarines”, they could also assist landing operations on Taiwan’s east, where defence was lax along the mountain terrains, he said.
“Operating helicopters on the eastern side could say a lot, both with respect to the naval campaign [and] to a landing campaign.”
Goldstein pointed out that the PLA had been working with helicopters equipped with drop tents. “That will allow them [to have] that extended range ... to operate on the eastern side.”
A television documentary broadcast recently on the mainland showcased PLA drills that included helicopters dropping troops in Taiwan to take over key airports on the island.
Taiwan has long planned to shelter forces on the harder-to-attack east of the island and has built two large underground hangars there, shielded by the Central Mountain Range.
“People don’t realise that a mountain can be difficult to attack, but it can also help your attack. You land right next to a mountain, [it] becomes like one side is shielded, so it makes your defence of your lodgement easier,” Goldstein said.
Taiwan’s eastern seaboard is also where the PLA’s aircraft carriers are likely to be deployed, whether to prevent third-party access to the island or for other purposes in the event of a conflict, observers say.
Two large-scale exercises involving aircraft carriers have taken place off Taiwan’s southeastern coast – in April 2022 with the Shandong followed by the Liaoning in October this year.
Lu Li-shih, a former instructor at the Taiwan Naval Academy in Kaohsiung, said Taiwan’s longest-range anti-cruise missile, the Hsiung Feng III, was likely to keep PLA aircraft carriers at least 400km (249 miles) away, during exercises or a conflict.
Lu noted that the carriers had also conducted regular “counter-intervention exercises” south of Japan’s Miyako Island – a critical area for possible US and Japanese support for Taiwan, in the event of military conflict.
According to Goldstein, the PLA’s aircraft carriers could adopt a “distraction strategy” near Guam and Manila to deter American forces from coming to Taiwan’s aid in the event of an attack from the mainland.
However, he suggested that a more likely scenario would involve the stationing of “anti-submarine pickets” off Taiwan’s north, east and south to “patrol aircraft that are hunting submarines and really try their best to clean out to make sure there are no enemy submarines in the eastern area”.
“That could really help if they do decide to have a landing force go on the northeast or the southeast [of Taiwan],” Goldstein added.
While Taiwanese defence officials do not release details of the locations of PLA naval activity, local media have reported that the PLA’s missions off the eastern seaboard have departed from past practices.
According to RW News, an independent online media outlet, two Type 072A amphibious ships spotted off the cities of Taitung and Hualien on Taiwan’s eastern coast in June spent more than a month in that location.
During the unusually lengthy mission, two mainland Yuting II-class landing vessels, designated 995 and 997, conducted hydrographic surveys between 16 and 24 nautical miles off beaches in the same area, the news outlet said.
The Type 072A ships also refuelled in the waters near Pengjia, an islet under Taiwanese military control off the island’s north, according to RW News, citing sources familiar with the matter.
The defence ministry in Beijing was approached for comment but has not yet responded.
Thomas Shattuck, senior programme manager at the University of Pennsylvania’s Perry World House, said the expansion of PLA operations to Taiwan’s east was “a natural evolution” of Beijing’s aerial pressure against the island.
According to Shattuck, the PLA is likely to be practising manoeuvres – like refuelling missions and helicopter take-offs and landings from aircraft carriers – to move near Taiwan’s east coast.
While the exercises were likely to grow in scale and complexity, there was “still a ways to go before Taiwan’s east is going to see the amount of regular activity that we are seeing in the Taiwan Strait”, he said.
Despite the rise in activity by PLA warplanes in operations involving Taiwan’s east – estimated to be around 524 – the aircraft in that area still account for only a small part of 2,771 total reported by the Taiwanese authorities in the first 11 months of the year.
Collin Koh, a senior fellow at the Institute of Defence and Strategic Studies at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, said the PLA might not find it so easy to reach the far side of the island in the event of a war.
He highlighted two waterways that are pivotal for PLA vessels to enter the Pacific Ocean – the Bashi Channel, between Taiwan and the Philippines, and the Miyako Strait between the southern Japanese islands of Miyako and Okinawa.
“When they are off the eastern seaboard, they will certainly fall under the interdiction of various forces, not just Taiwanese, but likely even the Japanese [and] the Americans,” Koh said.
According to Koh, Taipei has been working on coastal missiles “that could allow them to shoot at these vessels that try to transit those key waterways”. If PLA vessels were to sustain their activities on Taiwan’s eastern seaboard, they would have to “neutralise all these Taiwanese threats”, he said.
More from South China Morning Post:
- US adds nuclear-powered submarine to Guam outpost as China rivalry grows
- More aircraft, more ships, more often: how the PLA is pressuring Taiwan’s defences
- US defence chief Lloyd Austin reassures Japan amid China tensions, Trump policies
- Taiwan monitoring PLA warplanes and ships after William Lai’s stopovers
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