Thursday 29 October 2026
Taiwan counts 53 Chinese navy and official vessels in the waters from southern Japan to the Philippines and calls the threat obvious
China has more than 50 navy and other official vessels operating in a wide stretch of sea running from southern Japan down past Taiwan and off the Philippines, a senior Taiwan official said on Wednesday. Joseph Wu, secretary general of Taiwan National Security Council, published a map showing 53 ships, 34 of them navy warships, including the aircraft carrier Liaoning and its battle group east of the Philippines. “The simultaneous threat to Taiwan, Japan and the Philippines is obvious,” Wu said.
Wu posted the map on X on Wednesday, October 28, and spoke to reporters in Taipei. “We are staying vigilant about their activities,” he said. Taiwan has been publishing more detail and more maps of where Chinese warships and coast guard vessels operate, and Wu published a similar map in May.
The map puts the Liaoning carrier group east of the Philippines, other Chinese formations off Taiwan east and southeast coasts, and three vessels off the southern coast of Japan. Japan's defense ministry said it had tracked three Chinese warships and a coast guard ship a day earlier as they passed through the Osumi Strait off Kyushu and entered the Pacific.
China's defense ministry said earlier this month that the Liaoning is on a routine training exercise that is not directed at any specific country. The defense ministries of China, the Philippines and Japan did not immediately answer requests for comment on the Taiwan map.
China claims Taiwan as its own territory. Chinese ties with Japan and the Philippines have worsened in recent months. Beijing has been angered by Japanese support for Taiwan, and Chinese vessels and Philippine vessels are locked in a bitter standoff in the South China Sea.
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