China's Missile Buildup Escalates Tensions with Taiwan
- The Warrior Staff
- Oct 17, 2025
- 3 min read
Written By: Satori Smith-Kemper
Chinese leader Xi Jinping wants to take over Taiwan and have the island under Beijing’s control and to counter U.S power as a threat of overwhelming force to Asia, this being said, China is trying to take control over Taiwan by using missiles. The base of Brigade 611 has grown and doubled in size as China has been planning and preparing to attack. Big activity to the base has been shown since 2022; with launch pads, dummy tunnels for training, and a huge growth in missile force to prove their ambitions.
Missiles are a very dangerous weapon, especially the ones that the military of China has been training and grown accustomed to using. They have intense training to handle such weapons like the Dongfeng-17 missile; it is said to be 5 times faster than the speed of sound and is able to quickly maneuver evasive defenses. The soldiers practice launching missiles in farm fields and secluded valleys on the eastern seaboard facing Taiwan with a 100-mile strait.
China’s rocket force has increased their stock force by almost 50% within the last four years to 3,500 missiles. With such a high supply of a dangerous weapon, it is not a good idea to try and mess with them, but that’s exactly China’s goal. Xi Jinping believes that having an overwhelming number of missiles will make Taiwan believe they can’t fight back. They want to intimidate Taiwan.
Taiwan is not alone in this fight though; Taiwan has the U.S navy on their side. The U.S navy has been stationed in countries close by to Taiwan such as Japan and the Philippines, and has been keeping watch on China in case of a strike. The troops say that the Chinese missiles will be able to deter with a simple satellite following, but that may not be the case; there’s a high possibility of miscalculation, and can heighten the dangers of escalation. The U.S navy is only there to help make sure nothing major happens between Taiwan and China.
“I think the U.S has shown that it has an interest in being directly involved in the conflict between China and Taiwan. And the U.S has been involved in military defense and sales of arms and other defense technology.” Says Mr. Bahamonde, a world history teacher at Franklin high school “A global superpower like China would have the capability to inflict the highest levels of devastation but I do not believe the threat of nuclear weapons looms large in this conflict specifically.” he continues, speaking about if there would be horrible destruction if China were to send out missiles targeting Taiwan.
Xi Jinping is very adamant on getting Taiwan under his control. In just 18 months, a neighboring base, Brigade 616, south of Brigade 611 has grown rapidly when it was originally only farm land. There is no available information of what Xi Jinping plans on doing at this base, but they are definitely not going easy on Taiwan, or any other helpers on their side.
Chinese soldiers have built targets in the shape of U.S warships for missile practice. They would also scatter mobile units to caves and protected sites to try to avoid detection.
In early September, Xi Jinping spoke about upcoming missiles at a military parade in Beijing, these are missiles with hypersonic capabilities, including intercontinental nuclear missiles. Even that being said, most Taiwanese citizens do not believe any invasions from Chinese soldiers will occur due to it being an empty threat, because, as 65% of citizens say, If they wanted to attack, they would’ve done so already.
They have defense drills where they rehearse their response to a possible attack by having volunteer actors with fake casualties pretend to be badly hurt so medical professionals can get quicker at helping wounded civilians.
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