PLA exercises around Taiwan follow Balikatan drills Canada took part in, raising new questions for Ottawa

China's People's Liberation Army has spent the past two weeks running an extended series of combat-readiness patrols and naval task force deployments around Taiwan and across the South China Sea, in what Chinese defence officials have described as a response to the Balikatan 2026 multinational exercises in the Philippines. Canada was one of seven participating nations in those drills, alongside the United States, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, and France, and the Royal Canadian Navy's contribution put two Canadian frigates and an Aurora maritime patrol aircraft into waters that have since become the focus of significant Chinese military activity.

The pattern is now reaching what defence analysts and the Government of Canada are describing as a new normal in the Indo-Pacific. Chinese military activity surges in response to allied exercises in the South China Sea and around Taiwan, then settles back to what is itself an elevated baseline that would have been remarkable five years ago. For Canada, which has been increasing its Indo-Pacific naval presence under the 2022 Indo-Pacific Strategy and which now routinely deploys frigates through the Taiwan Strait, the question is what the Carney government will do as the cycle continues to escalate.

The PLA's most recent activity, summarised in a regular Ministry of National Defence press briefing in Beijing on May 9 and continued through this week, included joint combat-readiness patrols around Taiwan, the dispatch of a task force of main battleships to waters southwest of Penghu, and a separate Southern Theater Command surface group consisting of a Type 055 guided missile destroyer, a Type 052D destroyer, a Type 054A frigate, and a Type 903A replenishment vessel operating east of the Luzon Strait. Chinese officials linked the activity directly to the Balikatan exercise.

What Balikatan 2026 was

The Balikatan exercise series is an annual U.S.-Philippines bilateral drill that has, over the past several years, expanded to incorporate additional allies and partners. The 2026 iteration, which ran from April 20 to May 8, was the largest in the series' history. Roughly 17,000 troops from the seven participating nations took part in joint operations across Luzon and in waters off the Philippine coast. Scenarios included island-defence operations, anti-ship missile fires from coastal positions, and combined air defence drills.

The Canadian contribution included two frigates, HMCS Vancouver and HMCS Ottawa, both forward-deployed from Esquimalt as part of Operation Horizon, the Royal Canadian Navy's standing Indo-Pacific deployment. Both ships participated in the maritime component of the exercise and conducted combined air defence exercises with U.S. and Japanese partners. A CP-140 Aurora long-range patrol aircraft, also Esquimalt-based, took part in the surveillance and submarine-tracking portions of the drill.

For Canada, the exercise was the largest Indo-Pacific deployment in a generation. The Department of National Defence said in a release at the time that the participation reflected Canada's commitment to a free and open Indo-Pacific and to the rules-based international order. Defence Minister Bill Blair, in a virtual address to participating commanders during the exercise, framed Canada's involvement as both a contribution to regional stability and a demonstration of the Royal Canadian Navy's interoperability with key allies.

The Chinese response

Beijing's response to Balikatan 2026 has been more energetic than its response to previous editions of the exercise, and has been carried out in two visible phases. The first was the Southern Theater Command's late-April task force deployment east of the Luzon Strait, framed by Chinese state media as a response to the regional security situation. The second has been the rolling pattern of combat-readiness patrols around Taiwan that the PLA has continued through this week.

Chinese defence ministry spokesperson Wu Qian, in the May 9 briefing, accused unspecified foreign nations of using exercises like Balikatan to interfere in regional affairs and to threaten China's territorial integrity. Wu warned that the PLA would continue to take what he called the necessary measures to defend Chinese sovereignty and regional stability. The language was sharper than recent comparable statements and is being read by Indo-Pacific analysts as a signal that Beijing intends to keep elevated naval activity as a routine element of the regional security environment.

The PLA's pattern is now familiar. Surface task groups, often built around the new Type 055 cruiser-style destroyers, are deployed to the South China Sea or to the waters around Taiwan in response to allied activity. Air activity around the Taiwan Strait increases. The exercises themselves are sometimes accompanied by missile firings. The cycle is then followed by a partial drawdown, but the new baseline is consistently higher than the pre-exercise level.

The Canadian Strait transits

The Royal Canadian Navy has been a regular participant in Taiwan Strait transits over the past three years. The transits, conducted in accordance with the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, assert international navigation rights in waters that the Government of Canada considers international and that the People's Republic of China increasingly treats as territorial. HMCS Vancouver and HMCS Ottawa both completed Taiwan Strait transits during Operation Horizon in April, the latest in a series of Canadian transits.

The transits have produced sharp Chinese diplomatic responses, including formal protests from the Chinese embassy in Ottawa and from Chinese consular offices on both coasts. The Government of Canada has responded that the transits are legal, that they are routine, and that they are coordinated with allied partners. The pattern has not changed under the Carney government, and there is no indication that the new prime minister intends to slow Canada's Indo-Pacific naval tempo.

Canadian defence officials, speaking on background, told The Canadian Wire this week that the operational picture in the region is becoming more complex. PLA activity is more frequent, more diversified across sea and air domains, and more closely synchronised with diplomatic messaging from Beijing. The result is that allied transits and exercises are being met with what some officials describe as a managed escalation, in which the Chinese response is calibrated to demonstrate displeasure without crossing into outright military provocation.

Taiwan's response

Taiwan's Ministry of National Defence, in its standing tracker of PLA activity, has reported elevated incursions into Taiwan's air defence identification zone for nine consecutive days. The Ministry has scrambled fighter aircraft and activated air defence systems in response to several of the larger incursions, and President Lai Ching-te made a brief televised statement on Wednesday reiterating Taiwan's commitment to maintaining the cross-strait status quo and to defending its democratic institutions.

Taiwan's foreign ministry thanked the participating nations of Balikatan 2026, including Canada, for what it described as their commitment to peace and stability in the Indo-Pacific. The ministry called on the international community to continue pushing back against what it called Chinese coercion in the region. The statement made specific mention of Canadian frigates' participation in the exercise.

Inside Taiwan, public debate over how to respond to the elevated PLA tempo continues. President Lai's administration has maintained the trajectory of his predecessor on defence spending, asymmetric capability investment, and reservist training reform. Opposition voices, including the Kuomintang and the Taiwan People's Party, have called for renewed dialogue with Beijing on confidence-building measures, though analysts say there is little appetite in Beijing for such conversations under current conditions.

The broader Indo-Pacific posture

The Canadian deployment was part of a broader allied effort to demonstrate continued presence and interoperability across the region. The U.S. Pacific Fleet, the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force, and the Royal Australian Navy all participated in the maritime components of Balikatan 2026 alongside the Canadians. The French Navy's contribution included surface units and was the first French participation in Balikatan, building on the broader Indo-Pacific posture France has been developing since the 2021 AUKUS announcement.

Canada's Indo-Pacific Strategy, released by the previous Trudeau government in November 2022, set a path for sustained naval and air presence in the region. The Carney government has indicated it intends to maintain that trajectory and has reportedly considered expanding the deployment to a continuous three-frigate rotation in the medium term. Funding for that expansion would need to be addressed in the fall economic statement and in the long-term capital plan for the Royal Canadian Navy.

The U.S. Navy's Pacific Fleet has been engaged in rolling exercises and freedom-of-navigation operations across the South China Sea, around Taiwan, and into the East China Sea. The pace of those operations has not slowed under the Trump administration despite frequent presidential comments questioning the value of overseas force deployments. Allied partners read this as confirmation that the Indo-Pacific operational tempo is a function of bipartisan strategic continuity in Washington rather than of any individual administration's preferences.

The economic dimension

The military activity is taking place against the backdrop of a broader trade and economic dispute between the major Indo-Pacific powers. Chinese export controls on rare earth elements and on key processed materials for the semiconductor industry have continued to tighten through the year, with downstream impacts on Canadian and allied industries. The Carney government has been working with the U.S., Japan, and Australia on diversifying supply chains for critical minerals, an effort that overlaps with the National Electricity Agenda's industrial focus.

Cross-strait trade and Taiwan-China financial flows continue to function despite the elevated security tempo, but the volumes have been declining as Taiwanese firms continue their multi-year diversification of supply chains away from mainland China. Taiwanese investment in Canada has been growing modestly, with several semiconductor packaging and testing firms exploring expansion into Ontario and Quebec.

For the Canadian economy, the most immediate impact of any sharp escalation in the region would be through global financial markets and through shipping rates. A serious China-Taiwan crisis would disrupt the world's most important semiconductor supply chains and would translate quickly into inflation, supply shortages, and currency volatility across all major economies. The Bank of Canada is reportedly running scenario analysis on these tail risks as part of its standing geopolitical-risk briefings.

What's next

The PLA's current operational tempo is expected to continue through the rest of May. Chinese state media has signalled that further exercises around Taiwan are planned to coincide with the May 20 anniversary of President Lai's inauguration, a date that has historically attracted heightened Chinese military activity. Allied partners are preparing for that pattern to repeat.

For Canada, the next major Indo-Pacific event is the G7 summit at Kananaskis in June, where Indo-Pacific security is expected to be a significant agenda item. Prime Minister Carney will host the summit and will need to balance the security concerns of allied partners against the economic relationship with China that Canadian exporters continue to value. The summit will likely produce a strong joint communique on Indo-Pacific stability but is unlikely to dramatically alter the underlying trajectory.

The Department of National Defence will release its annual update on the Indo-Pacific Strategy implementation later this spring, with new commitments expected on naval rotations and on intelligence sharing arrangements. The Royal Canadian Navy's next Pacific deployment is scheduled to begin in early August. The Canadian Wire will continue to follow the regional situation as it develops.