China said on Thursday its Liaoning aircraft carrier had been on a routine training mission in the western Pacific and dismissed charges by Tokyo that the vessel and its escorts had entered Japanese waters.

Tokyo has lodged a protest with Beijing after a PLA aircraft carrier took a new route to the Pacific Ocean that brought it close to its outlying islands. China’s Liaoning carrier and two Type 052D guided-missile destroyers sailed from the East China Sea into Japan’s contiguous zones passing between the islands of Yonaguni and Iriomote on Tuesday and Wednesday,

Taiwan’s defence minister has warned that China’s growing military activity will make it more difficult to spot harbingers of an attack on his country. Wellington Koo said Taiwan needed to test its ability to respond to “a potential sudden contingency” and that his country’s reaction time to an emergency “cannot be as long as we would have imagined in the past”.

Many experts argue that China is preparing to seize Taiwan, driven by economic, geopolitical, and historical motivations. The CCP views Taiwan's annexation as a way to solidify its dominance in the Indo-Pacific and erase the legacy of the Chinese Civil War.

China sanctions nine U.S. military firms in response to arms sales to Taiwan, asserting violations of the one-China principle.