How serious are China’s military drills around Taiwan?

On Monday, Taiwan’s new president Lai Ching-te called on China to stop its military and political threats, pledging to neither “yield nor provoke” Beijing. China responded by launching two days of “punishment” drills including mock attacks at several points around the island it calls its own – seen as a warning that Chinese forces could seek to blockade it. The good news: the exercises are smaller in scale than those launched after Nancy Pelosi, then-US House Speaker, visited Taipei in August 2022 – and they were anticipated. The bad news: “This is just the ‘signal’. The real ‘punishment’ may be yet to come,” says Wen-Ti Sung, a fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Global China Hub. The risk of a miscalculation will keep tensions high.