There are many ways, short of actual invasion, that China can harass Taiwan

Senior American military officials have said they believe China’s leader, Xi Jinping, wants his armed forces to be ready to invade Taiwan, should the order be given, by 2027. That suggests the year ahead will be a crucial one for the People’s Liberation Army (pla) and its navy, which have been churning out ships, jets, drones and missiles at breakneck speed. Yet the likeliest scenario for 2026 is not a full-fledged conflict, but a steady increase in China’s political, economic and military pressure against Taiwan and other foes.

After Nancy Pelosi, then speaker of America’s House of Representatives, visited Taiwan in 2022, China conducted missile tests and naval drills around Taiwan, essentially simulating a blockade. It has since tightened that noose. In 2025 the pla conducted live-fire drills in the Taiwan Strait and sent record numbers of aircraft and ships across the so-called median line. The result is a new normal in which China could pivot from exercise to a real blockade in far less time than it would have taken a few years ago.

In 2026, expect this “anaconda” strategy of squeezing Taiwan to intensify and expand. China will continue to send weather balloons over Taiwan’s outlying islands and drones over the main island. China’s aircraft-carrier strike groups will increasingly venture around and east of the island, wearing down Taiwan’s air force by forcing it to scramble its jets. China might also remind Taiwan of its precarious communications by surreptitiously disrupting them. Undersea cables have suffered unexplained damage at least 11 times since 2023, raising fears that the pla is mimicking Russian sabotage in Europe.

Taiwan is not the only target of the mainland’s attention. China’s brinkmanship in the South China Sea is unlikely to abate. In August 2025 a vessel from China’s coastguard—part of the navy in all but name—collided with a warship of the pla Navy during a confrontation with a Philippine vessel near Scarborough Shoal, a contested outcrop. The incident illustrated the risks of China’s increasingly aggressive naval tactics, and suggested that a risk-reduction pact signed in August 2024 is not working as it should.

In 2026 the Philippines will take over from Malaysia as chair of asean, the ten-country club of South-East Asian countries. It will use that platform to increase diplomatic pressure on China to sign on to a code of conduct for the South China Sea. Alongside diplomacy, the Philippines will also seek to bolster deterrence by asking for more American support, possibly including joint patrols.

The wild card is a crisis in the East China Sea, farther to the north, where China claims the Japanese-controlled Senkaku islands. In 2025 China’s coastguard set a record for the longest-ever intrusion into those islands’ territorial waters, with a 92-hour stay after the pursuit of Japanese fishing boats. Experts worry that in 2026 China might establish a permanent naval presence there, chipping away at Japan’s legal claim. China could also expand its exploitation of resources near those disputed waters, adding to the two new oil and gas platforms it constructed in 2025.

“The threat China poses is real,” warned Pete Hegseth, America’s defence secretary, in May 2025. “And it could be imminent.” Many of China’s neighbours share that sense of alarm. But their immediate concern is less a sudden explosion of violence than a slow, steady and invidious process of creeping dominance by China, as it expands its naval footprint and suffocates Taiwan’s economy. ■