China developing options to threaten Taiwan with 'brute force,' Pentagon says

 China is making steady progress on developing more sophisticated weapons and expanding its armed force’s ability to operate away from the mainland, including against Taiwan, according to the Pentagon’s latest assessment of Beijing’s military strength.

Beijing was still uncertain as of last year that it could invade and take over Taiwan, despite the Chinese military’s determination to have the capabilities to seize the island forcibly by 2027, the report said.

The “PLA continues to refine multiple military options to force Taiwan unification by brute force,” the report said, referring to the People’s Liberation Army, the formal name of China’s military. But China’s leaders “remain unsure of the PLA’s readiness to successfully seize Taiwan,” it said.

Last week, the Trump administration approved an $11 billion arms-sales package to Taiwan that includes truck-based missile launchers, antitank missiles, artillery and drones. At the same time, President Trump has played down the likelihood Beijing would use force against the island and appears determined to deepen ties with Chinese leader Xi Jinping as the two prepare for an April summit.

The report said the administration would seek a wider range of military-to-military communications with China and other ways to make clear “our peaceful intentions.”

Chinese forces conducted exercises in 2024 to test “essential components” of an amphibious invasion, a firepower strike and a maritime blockade against Taiwan, the report said.

China has significantly stepped up its probing of Taiwan’s air and maritime boundaries since 2023, the report said, with activity within Taiwan’s air defense identification zone increasing more than 60%, from 1,703 incidents that year to 2,771 last year, the report said. China’s warships also stepped up their operations in the Taiwan Strait.

Beijing claims Taiwan as its own territory and has said it would seize the island by force if necessary.

The decades-old U.S. position on China’s sovereignty claim over Taiwan has been to maintain what officials call strategic ambiguity. The idea is to leave China guessing whether the U.S. would directly intervene in a clash, and at the same time restrain Taiwan from declaring outright independence and triggering a Chinese attack.

The Pentagon assessment is the first of Trump’s second term, and it follows the release of a national-security strategy that emphasizes U.S. defense of the Western Hemisphere. The strategy document calls for working more closely with partners and allies in the Pacific to deter attempts to seize Taiwan, but names China only a handful of times—almost exclusively in terms of the economic relationship.

“China’s historic military buildup has made the U.S. homeland increasingly vulnerable,” the latest report said. At 100 pages, it is about half as long as the China report released by the Biden administration last year.

“There seems to be less detail on military hardware than in past years, and a surprising emphasis on improved U.S.-China relations and mil-to-mil cooperation,” said Tom Karako, director of the Missile Defense Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, who closely tracks China’s missile developments.

The report said: “The PLA continues to make steady progress toward its 2027 goals, whereby the PLA must be able to achieve ‘strategic decisive victory’ over Taiwan, ‘strategic counterbalance’ against the United States in the nuclear and other strategic domains, and ‘strategic deterrence and control’ against other regional countries.”

China has an estimated stockpile of more than 600 nuclear warheads, but appears to be building them at a slower place than in recent years, the report said. Still, it is carrying out a “massive nuclear expansion” and is on track to have more than 1,000 warheads by 2030.

Beijing has rebuffed U.S. calls in recent years for arms-control talks because it wants to catch up with Washington and Moscow and has said that the two biggest nuclear powers should cut down their own arsenals first.

China is aiming to have six aircraft carriers by 2035, for a total fleet of nine, the assessment said. Its navy just finished sea trials of its third aircraft carrier, the first designed on its own. The new ship, the Fujian, has a flat deck, similar to that of American carriers, unlike its first two carriers, which have ramps on the bow. The ship has an electromagnetic launch system for aircraft, similar to the technology used on Ford-class carriers, the newest in the U.S. Navy’s fleet.

“The report clarifies publicly for the first time that the PLAN intends to operate NINE aircraft carriers by 2035…which would put its carrier fleet just behind that of the United States,” Ryan Fedasiuk of the American Enterprise Institute posted on X. PLAN refers to the People’s Liberation Army Navy, the formal name of China’s naval forces.

The U.S. Navy has 11 aircraft carriers.

China continues taking steps to project military power globally, the report said. In April, the PLA inaugurated what it called a logistics and training center at a naval base in Cambodia. China also has a military presence in Djibouti, near the Red Sea.