Taiwan’s National Security Council said China deployed more than 100 vessels in waters surrounding Taiwan in the week after President Donald Trump met Chinese President Xi Jinping in Beijing. The alert, posted by former Taiwanese defense minister Joseph Wu, described the activity as a sharp surge around the 1st Island Chain.
Wu wrote on X that his intelligence showed the People’s Republic of China had deployed over 100 vessels around the 1st Island Chain over the past few days, soon after the Beijing summit. He said China was “the one & only PROBLEM wrecking the Status Quo & threatening regional peace & stability,” pairing the warning with a graphic that appeared to show Chinese ship deployments in the South China Sea, the East China Sea, near Taiwan and near the Philippines.
The timing gives the claims unusual weight. The deployments were reported in the week after a summit meant to steady ties between Washington and Beijing, and they came as Taiwan also faced fresh uncertainty over U.S. military support. Taiwanese officials said they were not alerted to any potential pause in U.S. weapons shipments, according to The, even though lawmakers approved a $14 billion weapons package for Taiwan in January.
That package has not yet been signed off by Trump, leaving it in limbo just as Taipei is hearing one message from Washington and seeing another from the region’s waters. On Tuesday, May 19, 2026, acting U.S. Navy Secretary Hung Cao told lawmakers the U.S. was temporarily pausing weapons shipments to Taiwan, saying, “Right now we’re doing a pause in order to make sure we have the munitions we need for Epic Fury.”
The China side has made clear that Taiwan remains the central issue in relations with the United States. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning said Xi told Trump that “the Taiwan question is the most important issue in China-U.S. relations.” That message, paired with the reported vessel buildup, suggests Beijing is pressing its claim on Taiwan at exactly the moment the U.S. is trying to manage weapons supplies and avoid deeper friction.
The standoff sits atop a familiar military pattern. On June 3, 2023, the USS Chung-Hoon was observed by a Chinese navy ship sharply crossing its path in the Taiwan Strait during a freedom of navigation transit, a reminder that the waters around Taiwan remain among the most volatile in the Indo-Pacific. The latest ship activity, if sustained, points to a Beijing willing to test both Taipei’s nerves and Washington’s resolve while the diplomatic afterglow of the Trump-Xi summit is still fading.
