← WW3 RISK TRACKER / THEATER: China – Taiwan Tensions
China – Taiwan conflict
▲ STALE FEED — last run failed validation for this theater; showing most recent verified entry.
- Taiwan's Ministry of National Defense detected 11 PLA aircraft and eight naval vessels operating around the island on August 16.
- Taiwan completed multi-day military exercises incorporating road and tunnel network utilization for urban defense in Taipei.
- Taiwan outlined plans to increase its annual defense budget by 16 percent for fiscal year 2027.
- A government audit in Taiwan identified defense deficiencies against evolving PRC unmanned aerial vehicle technology.
- Japan delivered a new shinkansen high-speed train model to Taiwan, maintaining bilateral economic and infrastructure cooperation.
Taiwan and China maintain separate effective administration under sustained military activity around the Taiwan Strait, with no active cross-Strait conflict or blockade. Taiwan completed multi-day urban defense exercises in Taipei while PLA aircraft and naval vessels conducted routine operations near the island.
Taiwan's Ministry of National Defense reported detecting 11 PLA aircraft and eight naval vessels near Taiwan on August 16. Taiwan armed forces concluded drills incorporating road and tunnel networks in Taipei for urban defense, while a government audit identified gaps in Taiwan's aerial drone counter-measures against PLA systems.
Taiwan authorities outlined plans to increase national defense spending by 16 percent for fiscal year 2027. In regional interactions, Japan delivered new shinkansen train models to Taiwan on August 16, while PRC media criticized Japanese security policies.
Cross-Strait posture continues under Taiwan's Han Kuang No. 42 exercise baseline and PLA daily air and maritime deployments. Government agencies in Taipei continue evaluating potential logistics and supply risks under potential Chinese maritime blockade scenarios.
Assessment: PLA deployments and Taiwan military preparedness exercises will maintain elevated activity without crossing into open military confrontation over the near term.
- 2026-08-12
China announces a joint naval exercise with Indonesia in waters east of Taiwan.
- 2026-08-11
Taiwan simulates invasion defense and communications throttling during major military exercises.
COMMON QUESTIONS
Are China and Taiwan at war?
No. There is no armed conflict. China claims Taiwan and applies sustained military and economic pressure — air and naval activity around the island, exercises, and coercion short of force — while Taiwan builds its defences. Not an armed conflict under international humanitarian law: none of the 102 conflicts in Geneva Academy's classification involves China and Taiwan. The index tracks the risk, not a war. The index reads 16/100 as of 1 January 1970 (friction), on a scale where 50 and above is reserved for fighting actually under way.
How dangerous is the China and Taiwan situation right now?
The index reads 16/100 — friction. The scale is anchored on 22 historical episodes from 1914 to 2005, so the number means the same thing from one theater to the next. It is a measurement of what is reported, not a forecast.
How is the China and Taiwan risk index calculated?
By fixed formula from open-source reporting: events are extracted and graded by how well evidenced they are, scored across weighted factors, and the model never picks the number. How the index works, and what it does not measure, is explained at wwiii.report/methodology.
How often is this updated?
Every day. The report is rebuilt from that day's reporting and the index re-judged from it, and a fall is published only once the evidence confirms it.
Timeline events — hover the chart to read them
Timeline events — hover the chart to read them
Timeline events — hover the chart to read them
One 0–100 scale for the whole conflict. 0–49 is escalation before war; 50–100 is active war and how far it has gone.
50 is not a threshold the number can cross on its own. Which side a theater sits on is decided by whether verified belligerents are fighting there, so war onset always moves the score up across 50 — the number never declares a war by climbing.
It is a stage, not a probability: 42 is not a 42% chance of war. Below 50 it grades movement toward war, above 50 the war itself.
Why it moved, under the chart, names what changed in the latest move: the day’s readings — strikes, casualties, talks — and, when the conflict’s stage was re-judged, what was graded differently and the events behind it. Open it for the detail.
Re-judged from open reporting by fixed formula — the model never picks a number — and a fall publishes only once the evidence confirms it. A dot on the line is a day the stage itself moved. How it is made →
Direction — which way the week pushed. Severity — where the index sits. Connections — how much of the rest a shock here reaches. Cascade — that reach combined with how ready this theater is to go off.
The index reads the state of the conflict, not the volume of news. Each run grades the factors listed below against fixed rubrics, and the score follows by formula.
So a dramatic headline moves nothing unless it changes a grade. A theater already graded for recurring incursions absorbs one more without moving — it is priced in.
Open How this was measured for every grade, its movement since the last run, and the events behind it. Full construction →
A different measurement from the score above, from a different source. This line counts how much of the world's news reports conflict between these two states, against their own long-run normal: 100 is normal, 200 is twice the usual level.
It is computed mechanically from the GDELT Project's open event stream every 15 minutes and never touches the assessed index above — when both move together, that agreement is the signal. A day with too few events shows no reading rather than a guess. Click the chart for the full history.
Data: the GDELT Project.