The drills now underway are not casual maneuvers. They are a form of punctuation. The air and maritime exclusion zones announced for Dec 29, 2025, stretching across the Taiwan Island's north, southwest, southeast, and east, form a kind of cartographic parenthesis. It does not close the island; it frames it.

Joint patrols test the responsiveness of command networks, interdiction drills explore how ports and choke-points could be sealed under duress, and long-range precision platforms simulate strikes against mobile ground targets.

Some media often try to frame these exercises as a performance using dramatic language like "encirclement", "strangulation", and "coercion" to conjure a cinematic atmosphere. However, the exercises are not an act or a bluff — they are a signal.

Reunification, in China's view, is not a question of "if", but of "how" and "when". It is the axis around which every statement and drill turns.

(Illustrator: Zhang Yajie)