China Squeezes Taiwan With Jets, Cables and Propaganda While Skipping a Declared Invasion

China isn't invading Taiwan. It doesn't have to.

According to Taiwan's Ministry of National Defense, cited by ANI News, People's Liberation Army aircraft flew 3,764 incursions into Taiwan's air defense identification zone last year, a 22.4% jump from 2024. That's not a war. It's pressure, applied daily, designed to exhaust a democracy of 23 million people without firing a shot.

National Review frames this as Beijing pursuing what it calls "unification without formal unification," a strategy of coercion, isolation and psychological grinding rather than a D-Day-style assault. ANI News lays out the same picture in blunter terms: diplomatic squeeze, military intimidation, grey-zone tactics, psychological warfare and espionage, all running simultaneously.

The History Fight

Beijing's public line is that Taiwan has "belonged to China since antiquity." ANI News calls this claim false and lays out the actual timeline: China ruled Taiwan only during the Qing Dynasty, starting when it annexed the island in 1683. Japan took it in 1895. When Japan lost World War II in 1945, the Republic of China government took control. The People's Republic of China wasn't founded until 1949, after the Chinese Communist Party won the civil war and drove Nationalist forces onto the island.

By ANI's count, a Chinese government has actually governed Taiwan for 216 years total, out of thousands of years of Chinese history, and the PRC itself has never governed it for a single day.

Joseph Wu, Secretary-General of Taiwan's National Security Council, put it directly to Nikkei Asia, as quoted by ANI News: "The undeniable fact is Taiwan has never been under PRC rule since its founding on Oct 1, 1949. That's the status quo. The threat of invasion is expansionism that must be deterred. Taiwan's future can only be decided by its own people."

Cables, Ships and Everyday Sabotage

The pressure isn't just fighter jets. ANI News reports Taiwan is dealing with online attacks and "commercial" ships that regularly sever the undersea internet and communication cables ringing the island. Maritime and aerial intimidation is rising in tandem.

Wu told Nikkei Asia that Taiwan's defense planning has had to change shape because of this. "In the old days, defense of Taiwan was a responsibility of the [Ministry of National Defense]," he said. "But nowadays, thinking about the resilience of Taiwan's government or Taiwan society as a whole, we need to coordinate among government agencies so that, when a crisis comes, whether it's a natural or man-made disaster, society can understand how they can survive, how they can help themselves and how they can help others."

That's a government preparing its entire population, not just its military, for sustained coercion.

The Domestic Voice Beijing Would Rather Amplify

Al Jazeera's Erin Hale profiled Chang An-lo, known as the "White Wolf," founder of Taiwan's Chinese Unification Promotion Party. Chang has a background Al Jazeera describes as tied to organized crime, election interference and Chinese influence operations, and he insists he's working for peace.

Chang accuses Taiwanese President William Lai Ching-te of provoking Beijing to justify independence. "If you don't pursue Taiwan independence, there won't be a war," Chang told Al Jazeera. "But if you push for independence, sell Taiwan out, and provoke a conflict, we will rise up on the front lines. We refuse to be cannon fodder."

Chang says he's negotiated with Chinese authorities to designate Daoist temples in Taiwan as civilian shelters in case of conflict. He wears a vest calling for Taiwan's armed forces to "rise up on the front line," a message that reads very differently depending on which side you think should be doing the rising.

Al Jazeera is clear about where Chang stands with actual Taiwanese voters: his position is unpopular. Opinion polls, per Al Jazeera, show most Taiwanese want to keep the island's de facto independent status, not merge with the mainland. Taiwan has been governed separately from the mainland for more than a century, first as a Japanese colony, then as the Republic of China after the Nationalist government's 1940s retreat there.

What's Actually Contested

Chang's argument—that Lai's government is provoking a war Taiwan doesn't need to fight—is a real political position inside Taiwan, not a fringe talking point invented by Beijing. He's arguing that restraint from Taipei, not deterrence, is what prevents conflict. Whether that's true is unresolved and unprovable in advance, since it depends on predicting how Beijing would respond to a Taiwan that never pursued formal independence. Taiwan's government and most of its polled population reject that framing and treat Chinese military pressure, not Taiwanese policy, as the destabilizing force.

None of the three sources cited here identify any active PRC invasion plan with a set timeline. What they document is a pattern: incursions up 22.4% year over year, infrastructure sabotage, and a political party inside Taiwan itself amplifying Beijing's line. Whether that pattern is preparation for eventual force or a long-term strategy to avoid needing force at all is the open question neither Taipei nor Washington has been able to answer.

The next marker to watch: whether PLA incursion numbers for 2026 exceed last year's 3,764, a tally Taiwan's Ministry of National Defense updates regularly and that has climbed every year Beijing has escalated pressure short of war.