The top US commander in the Pacific said on Monday that Beijing was on a “dangerous course” and its operations around Taiwan were not mere exercises, but “rehearsals”.
“We face a profoundly consequential time in the Indo-Pacific. China is on a dangerous course,” said Admiral Samuel Paparo, head of US Indo-Pacific Command, in a special address to an AI expo hosted by the Special Competitive Studies Project think tank.
“Their aggressive manoeuvres around Taiwan are not just exercises. They are rehearsals,” he continued, without explicitly referencing a potential takeover of Taiwan.
Beijing regards the self-ruled island as part of China, to be reunited by force if necessary. Most countries, including the US, do not recognise Taiwan as an independent state, but Washington is opposed to any attempt to take it by force and is committed to arming it.
In recent years, the US has grown increasingly anxious about a mainland takeover, with officials and lawmakers eyeing 2027 as a possible window, and pointing to more frequent People’s Liberation Army sorties that cross the Taiwan Strait’s median line as signs of growing aggression.
Tensions between Taiwan and mainland China have also grown in the year since Taiwanese leader William Lai Ching-te, whom Beijing has called a “destroyer of peace”, took office.
Without naming specific countries, Paparo said on Monday that China’s aggression was compounded by “a growing transactional symbiosis among an axis of autocracies,” evidenced by “technology transfers and coordinated military activities”.
The US was at a “technological inflection point” with advances in AI, hypersonic weapons and additive manufacturing, he said, calling for a change in course in favour of speed and innovation.
“We need engagement in the speed of combat, not committee,” Paparo said, adding that the scientific community and industry were essential to the “urgent transformation” needed.
Paparo, who assumed his command in May 2024, has made similar comments in recent months, previously naming China, Russia and North Korea as a “triangle of troublemakers”.
His remarks Monday came a day after the conclusion of the Shangri-La Dialogue, during which US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth called China a threat and said it wanted to “fundamentally alter the region’s status quo”.
Beijing protested Hegseth’s remarks, with the foreign ministry on Sunday accusing him of deliberately ignoring calls for peace from countries in the region.
Hegseth did not meet his Chinese counterpart, Defence Minister Dong Jun, who opted to skip the annual security forum in Singapore.
The Chinese embassy in Washington disputed Paparo’s characterisation of Beijing’s actions around Taiwan on Monday.
“For the cross-strait situation, there is no factor more destabilising than the provocations made by the ‘Taiwan independence’ separatists and the disruptions by foreign forces,” said spokesperson Liu Pengyu, adding that China’s military “drills” were meant to serve as a deterrent to “separatist plots”.
