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Maki Nakagawa

【#1311】Exercises Can Shift to Real Taiwan Invasion, says Chinese Military Paper

Maki Nakagawa ／ 2025.11.13 (Thu)


November 10, 2025

　
The People’s Liberation Army Daily, the official newspaper of the Chinese military, recently ran a front-page article stating that the military’s joint training has deepened, allowing the PLA to switch immediately from training to actual war. The article can be viewed as intimidating Taiwan and urging each member of the Chinese military to be prepared and resolved to invade Taiwan at any time. China’s war preparations are steadily making progress both physically and mentally.

Joint training represents war preparations

The article, dated October 9 and titled “A New Phase of New Era Joint Training,” reported that training has changed as follows over five years after the implementation of the PLA Joint Operations Outline (Trial) in November 2020:

(1) The merging of training and war preparations

In April this year, the PLA Eastern Theater Command conducted the Strait Thunder-2025A exercise. Through the previous Joint Sword exercise and the Strait Thunder exercise, preparations for exercises have come to equate to preparations for war, and the state of conducting exercises have come to equate to the state of conducting war. Joint training is no longer a mere training, It has become a process of implementing war preparations and enhancing war capabilities. Joint training enables a switch from training to actual war.

(2) Systematic training

Joint training in each theater and exercises in the army, navy, and air force have been systematically conducted across all regions throughout the year, and a new format of preparing for war while conducting training has emerged.

(3) Utilization of new-domain forces in joint training

A swarm of unmanned underwater, ground, and air vehicles, as well as new-domain forces such as equipment for electronic, cyber, outer space warfare, have been incorporated into joint training to study how to effectively operate them in modern warfare.

Actual training supporting the “new phase”

Reports on actual training confirm the abovementioned “new phase.”

Army units were reportedly ordered to enter the first-class combat readiness, the highest level of war readiness, and travel long distances to mission areas. Air force units were also ordered to enter combat readiness just before the start of training and fly into mission airspaces. These exercises simulate a direct transition from training to war.

Regarding new-domain forces, the PLA frequently uses unmanned vehicles for actual training, and tests and verifies new-domain equipment at urban combat training facilities to look into the fusion of unmanned equipment with manned combat capabilities.

By reporting such situation on the front page of the official military newspaper, China has internally and externally demonstrated that the PLA is prepared for an invasion of Taiwan and maintains the capability to switch from training to real war through surprise action.

Maki Nakagawa is a researcher at the Japan Institute for National Fundamentals and a former commander of the Basic Intelligence Unit, Japan Ground Self-Defense Force