Taiwan indicated that the island’s armed forces will conduct “exhaustive monitoring” of a recent exercise involving several warships by the Chinese navy in the Western Pacific.
In a statement released on Sunday, April 19, the spokesperson for the Eastern Theater Command of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA, Chinese Army) announced that the 133rd naval formation will carry out exercises in this region to test its operational capabilities on the high seas.
The vessels, led by the 052D class destroyer Baotou, must cross the Yokoate Channel, a sea route close to the Japanese mainland and through which Chinese ships have passed in previous exercises.
Regarding this deployment, Taiwan’s Minister of National Defense, Wellington Koo, stated that he will use joint intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance capabilities, as well as “diverse sources of information”, to maintain “exhaustive monitoring” of the movements of these ships, according to the CNA news agency.
Such monitoring will not be limited to the areas surrounding the Taiwan Strait, but also the South China Sea and the East China Sea, Koo added, without providing further details.
In the most recent report, the Taiwanese defense ministry reported the presence of 11 Chinese Navy ships in the vicinity of the island between 6am on Sunday (10pm on Saturday in Lisbon) and 6am today (10pm on Sunday in Lisbon), the highest daily number recorded so far this month.
The deployment of this naval formation, which Beijing defined as “routine training”, was announced just two days after the Chinese Government protested against the transit of the Japanese Self-Defense Forces destroyer JS Ikazuchi through the Taiwan Strait.
Tensions between China and Japan intensified in late 2025 when Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi suggested that Japanese forces could intervene in the event of a conflict in Taiwan.
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