← WW3 RISK TRACKER / THEATER: China – Taiwan Tensions
China – Taiwan conflict
- Taiwan MND reported heightened PLA aircraft and naval deployments operating in surrounding maritime and airspace zones.
- A test launch of a Taiwanese satellite launch vehicle failed on 19 August, triggering brief missile alarms.
- Taiwanese President Lai Ching-te urged opposition parties to pass the defense budget after KMT members skipped negotiations.
- Beijing's Taiwan Affairs Office criticized ongoing Taiwanese military exercises, citing disruption to civilian shipping and navigation.
- Taiwanese prosecutors indicted a military service member on 18 August for allegedly leaking confidential material to PRC intelligence.
Taiwan is conducting defense preparations and military exercises while PLA naval vessels and aircraft maintain daily deployments around the island. Effective administration remains divided across the Taiwan Strait without active armed conflict or an implemented maritime blockade.
PLA Navy ships and PLA Air Force sorties operated near Taiwan's air defense identification zone over the past 36 hours. A test launch of a Taiwan-developed satellite launch vehicle failed on 19 August, briefly raising missile alarms among local residents. Taiwanese prosecutors indicted an active-duty soldier on 18 August for providing confidential military documentation to PRC intelligence networks.
President Lai Ching-te called on opposition lawmakers to pass the national defense budget on 18 August after KMT representatives boycotted cross-party negotiations. PRC Taiwan Affairs Office spokespersons issued statements on 19 August criticizing Taiwan's live-fire drills for interfering with maritime transport and civilian activity. Defense officials from India and Japan met on 19 August to review bilateral defense links and regional maritime cooperation.
The United States maintains unofficial relations with Taiwan under the Taiwan Relations Act while PRC authorities assert claims over Taiwan under the one-China principle. Taiwanese authorities continue asymmetric defense initiatives and civil defense training following Han Kuang No. 42 exercises. PRC forces maintain a persistent operational footprint across the Taiwan Strait median line and southwestern ADIZ.
Cross-Strait military deployments and legal-domain actions maintain elevated friction without triggering a direct military confrontation. Assessment: Cross-Strait operational activity will remain focused on gray-zone deployments and domestic defense procurement debates in 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 20/100 as of 1 January 1970 (coercive pressure), 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 20/100 — coercive pressure. 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.