Commentary: China ups the ante with live-fire drills around Taiwan, but war unlikely

Some of the military movements have indeed already been geolocated to the state at places such as the city of Xiamen or even heading in that direction, although several other people have been identified as photos and videos taken from earlier events such as the 2019 Beijing military parade or geolocated to places far from Fujian.

There are also concerns that the Chinese military buildup near Taiwan echoes that of Russian federation in the lead-up in order to its February invasion of Ukraine , in which a seemingly endless stream of photos and videos showed Russian military vehicles nearing Ukraine from all factors of the compass, copying warnings from some Western intelligence agencies about the forthcoming invasion.

However , this is unlikely to be the situation for Taiwan, with the PLA troop motions appearing to be much smaller within scale so far. The gathering of makes also appears to lack the support components like engineering and electronic warfare devices which would be crucial to the success of an actual issue, making the current movements more akin to a show of force rather than preparation for war.

Western intelligence agencies have also not really suggested that there are signs of anything outside of the planned workouts, making it all the more most likely that it is just Cina expressing its displeasure at Pelosi’s trip to Taiwan.