The incremental process is already underway, in Beijing’s view.
The incremental process is already underway, in Beijing’s view.
W hen Americans imagine China’s unification with Taiwan, they usually imagine an event: a morning when missiles fly, Chinese troops cross the Taiwan Strait, and the United States and Japan must decide whether to intervene. Much analysis therefore revolves around dates — 2027, 2035, even 2049, and whether the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) will possess the capability to conquer Taiwan by then. This way of thinking produces a static, binary framework: Taiwan is either unified with China, or it is not.
But while strategists debate when China might cross that line, Beijing appears increasingly interested in erasing the line itself. Its strategy is evolving from achieving unification at a particular moment to achieving it incrementally. Unification, in this conception, is not merely a future event. It is a dynamic process.
An illuminating formulation came this June from Zhu Weidong, director of the Institute of Taiwan Studies at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and vice president of the National Society of Taiwan Studies. Zhu calls his concept bu tong er tong — roughly, “unification without formal unification,” or what might be called “de facto unification.” He argues that unification “cannot be rushed, cannot be slowed, and still less can be waited for.” More recently, he explained that the objective is to create the “objective facts of unification” before formal political unification occurs — accumulating small victories until they become a larger strategic victory.
The logic is subtle but consequential. Instead of first obtaining Taiwan and then exercising sovereignty, jurisdiction, and international recognition, Beijing can reverse the sequence: Acquire pieces of those attributes before political unification.
The China Coast Guard can exercise a little jurisdiction. The PLA can acquire a little more control of the surrounding sea and airspace. Chinese law can reach a few more Taiwanese citizens. Foreign governments, corporations, and international organizations can be pressured to treat Taiwan increasingly according to Beijing’s “one China” rules.
No individual step constitutes unification. But accumulated together, they progressively diminish the space in which Taiwan exercises de facto independence. Formal unification comes last, after some of its substance has already been achieved.
Zhu is not Xi Jinping, and his formulation should not be mistaken for an official declaration of Chinese policy. But his institutional position makes his thinking significant, particularly because it corresponds strikingly with Beijing’s recent behavior, which has made Zhu’s theory especially important.
Chinese military-aircraft activity around Taiwan has been substantially below 2025 levels, having dropped to a three-year low. March saw 173 PLA sorties, down 60 percent from March 2025. April recorded 229, May 274, June 208, and July 260 — still 53 percent below July 2025.
Yet focusing on aircraft alone misses what may be the more consequential development. The China Coast Guard and other government-vessel activity has become more ambitious. Taiwan recorded 15 China Coast Guard incursions into restricted waters during the first quarter. June alone produced at least 11 — the highest monthly figure of 2026 — and, more importantly, operations spread beyond the familiar pressure points around Kinmen and Dongsha to Penghu, Taiping Island, and waters east of Taiwan. By the end of July, the cumulative number had reached forty-two.
On June 7, four Chinese government vessels entered Taiwan’s restricted waters southwest of the island while claiming over radio that they were conducting maritime law enforcement in waters under Chinese jurisdiction. Taiwan’s coast guard expelled them. Chinese vessels have also begun sustained patrols east of Taiwan. During one June operation, Chinese authorities radioed passing cargo ships seeking information about their crews and destinations.
Then Beijing widened the experiment. As Typhoon Dolphin approached in August, China’s Guangdong Maritime Safety Administration announced traffic-control measures for northbound ships passing through the Taiwan Strait and instructed vessels to obey Chinese maritime authorities.
Days later, a Chinese warship conducted a “passage exercise” with an Indonesian frigate 70 to 80 nautical miles east of Taiwan. Militarily, the exercise was modest. Politically, it was more interesting: China was conducting an operation with a third country in waters where Beijing increasingly seeks to demonstrate jurisdiction. Taiwan condemned the maneuver as an attempt to create the false impression that Beijing governs those waters.
This is not simply practicing for an invasion. Increasingly, it resembles practicing jurisdiction — governing before unification.
For decades, Taiwan itself has pursued almost the mirror image of this strategy: bu du er du — “independence without declaring independence,” or de facto independence. Taiwan does not proclaim a new “Republic of Taiwan,” which could trigger a catastrophic confrontation. Instead, it possesses nearly every practical attribute of a sovereign state: a constitution, government, military, currency, democratic elections, borders, and a distinct political identity. It has strengthened its international relevance through democracy, technology, trade, and its indispensable position in advanced semiconductor supply chains.
Thus, we are witnessing a collision between two silent strategies: Taiwan’s de facto independence, and Beijing’s emerging de facto unification.
The asymmetry is important. Taiwan’s strategy relies heavily on democratic legitimacy, economic relevance, and international relationships to preserve its autonomous space. Beijing uses geopolitical weight, diplomatic pressure, law enforcement, legal claims, and military gray-zone operations to shrink that space.
Gray-zone tactics are particularly effective because each move is deliberately calibrated to remain below the threshold likely to trigger military intervention. Would America go to war because four China Coast Guard cutters entered waters near Taiwan? Because a Chinese agency demanded information from a merchant ship? Because Beijing issued typhoon navigation instructions? Almost certainly not. Yet if Washington answers no hundreds of times, the cumulative strategic result may eventually become enormous.
Taiwan’s de facto independence seeks to postpone political unification indefinitely. Beijing’s de facto unification seeks to make eventual political integration increasingly irreversible — leaving Taiwan, the United States, Japan, and other democratic partners with fewer choices as time passes.
This presents a serious problem for Washington’s longstanding insistence that neither side should unilaterally change the status quo. What if the status quo is not being overturned dramatically but continuously hollowed out? The United States could someday discover that it successfully deterred the invasion it spent decades preparing for while failing to prevent the incremental absorption that occurred instead.
President Trump is expected to meet Xi Jinping in the United States in September. Much attention will understandably focus on military deterrence and the still-unresolved $14 billion Taiwan arms package. Those issues matter enormously. But the Taiwan problem is no longer reducible to a military balance, much less a single equation measuring Chinese military power against Taiwanese and American military power.
If the United States genuinely intends to preserve Taiwan’s democracy and its own strategic interests in the Indo-Pacific, it needs a comprehensive, consistent, and cogent strategy for resisting de facto unification.
That means strengthening Taiwan’s defenses but also defending its jurisdictional space. The United States and its allies should work jointly with Taiwan to expand joint coast-guard cooperation, maritime-domain awareness, disaster-response coordination, freedom-of-navigation operations, port-security cooperation, and other forms of legitimate international activity in the waters surrounding Taiwan. When Beijing attempts to manufacture jurisdictional precedents, democratic governments should create counter-precedents demonstrating that those waters are not China’s sovereign administrative domain.
Washington should simultaneously accelerate Taiwan’s meaningful participation in global governance — particularly organizations dealing with aviation, health, policing, disaster relief, technology, and maritime affairs. U.S. law already directs the government to develop a strategy for expanding Taiwan’s participation in international organizations. That objective should now be understood not merely as diplomatic support for Taiwan but as an essential component of deterrence.
The contest over Taiwan may not begin with an invasion. In an important sense, it has already begun. For years, Taiwan has survived through independence without declaring independence. Beijing now appears to be answering with its mirror image: unification without declaring unification. America must learn to defend Taiwan not only against the day China might attempt to take it, but through the thousands of days during which Beijing may attempt to take it piece by piece.