The Taiwan Strait

Few waterways carry so much trade and so much tension at once. The Taiwan Strait separates the island of Taiwan, governed by the Republic of China, from the People's Republic of China on the mainland, which regards Taiwan as part of its territory. A large share of the world's container ships pass through it, by one Bloomberg analysis nearly half of the global fleet in 2022, carrying goods between Northeast Asia and the rest of the world. Its waters are also a stage for military signaling: warplanes cross a once-respected median line, navies stage large drills, and foreign warships make transits that Beijing protests and their governments call routine.

The strait is about 370 kilometers long and averages about 180 kilometers wide, narrowing to about 130 kilometers between Fujian province and Taiwan's northwest coast. It is shallow, averaging about 60 meters deep, a drowned stretch of continental shelf that was dry land during the ice ages. It joins the East China Sea to the north with the South China Sea to the south. Taiwan controls the Penghu islands in the middle of the strait and the Kinmen and Matsu islands just off the mainland coast, within sight of the city of Xiamen. Typhoons sweep across it in summer and autumn, and the winter monsoon whips up rough seas, making it a demanding passage for small vessels.

The strait became a front line in 1949, when the Republic of China government retreated to Taiwan after the Chinese Civil War, and crises over Kinmen and Matsu followed in 1954–55 and 1958. In the 1950s a U.S. Air Force general drew an informal median line down the strait, which both sides largely observed for decades, though Beijing never recognized it and since 2020 has said it does not exist. Since 2022 Chinese military aircraft have crossed it routinely, and the PLA has staged large drills around Taiwan, including Strait Thunder-2025A in April 2025 and Justice Mission 2025 that December. The United States and allies including Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia, and Japan sail warships through, describing the strait as international waters, and the first U.S. transit of 2026 came in January.

• China
  The world's most populous nation reborn as an economic superpower bordering
• Taiwan
  A self-governing island of 23 million whose status two governments read differently bordering
• South China Sea
  Asia's contested crossroads of shipping and reefs connects
• The Strait of Malacca
  The long channel between Sumatra and the Malay Peninsula, the world's busiest oil chokepoint linked Asian shipping chokepoint
• Pacific Ocean
  Earth's largest and deepest ocean part of