Justice Mission 2025 is a Golden Opportunity to Learn about PLA Joint Planning and Capabilities
Deep Dives
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The article extensively discusses PLA Eastern Theatre Command's exercises and role in Taiwan contingency planning. Understanding this specific theater command's structure, history, and operational responsibilities would give readers essential context for evaluating the military significance of Justice Mission 2025.
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The 1995-1996 crisis provides critical historical context for understanding current PLA exercises around Taiwan. It was the last major military confrontation in the strait and established patterns of Chinese military coercion and U.S. carrier group responses that directly inform the strategic dynamics discussed in this article.
Authoritative PLA texts published since 2022 emphasize enhancing the aggressiveness of the military strategic guidelines, noting that the PLA must take the initiative to seize strategic opportunities and create favorable external conditions. At the strategic level, this means no longer simply defending China’s borders and passively responding to threats but rather actively building and shaping a military posture around China’s periphery that can adequately respond to China’s perceived threats. The implementation of this guidance can be seen in China’s more assertive military posture in the South China Sea and around Taiwan. Report to Congress on Military and Security Developments Involving the People’s Republic of China 2025
On 29 December, just as the summit between President’s Zelenskyy and Trump was finishing at Mar-a-lago, and hundreds of journalists were filing their initial analyses of the meeting, the Peoples Liberation Army Eastern Theatre Command announced that it had commenced exercise "Justice Mission 2025" in the Taiwan Strait.
Similar to other joint exercises conducted in 2025 and 2024, this was an activity to rehearse future military campaigns to “shield” Taiwan from outside military forces that might come to its aid. At the same time, the bottom of the shields in the PLA posters for the exercise are shaped like blades. This is intended by the Chinese to “cut off the delusional dream of Taiwan independence.” Thus, Justice Mission 2025 is intended to project the image of an advanced, capable PLA that can both attack Taiwan while fending off assistance from the military forces of America, Japan and elsewhere.
The exercise is rehearsing a range of military activities and features live fire drills.
The exercise is one of President Xi’s ways of demonstrating his displeasure at the 17 December 2025 announcement by the U.S. government of a massive weapons sale to Taiwan. With a value of US$11.1 billion, this is the largest single U.S. sale to Taiwan in history, and includes highly symbolic weapon systems such as the HIMARS long-range precision strike system.
Finally, we should not discount that Justice Mission 2025 is also designed to message China’s continuing displeasure with Japan. Two of the exercise zones for this PLA activity would (theoretically) permit operations against Japanese military targets on Yonaginajima to the east.
The aim of this article is to provide insights into the new PLA exercise, including locations and objectives, and what the political and military
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