China's drills around Taiwan since November simulated a blockade but did not impose one
Since early November, China has been running major military drills around Taiwan. The exercises have been large enough, and close enough to the island, to fuel claims on social media that Beijing had imposed a blockade. Those claims are not accurate: China’s armed forces have simulated a blockade, not carried one out.
A real blockade would mean cutting Taiwan off in practice — restricting or stopping movement by sea and air so that the island could not be freely reached. That has not happened. The drills have been designed to look like, and to rehearse, that kind of encirclement, but they have stopped short of actually sealing Taiwan off from the outside world.
For an international audience, the distinction matters. Simulated blockade drills can still raise tensions, signal military intent, and be read as pressure on Taiwan, but they are not the same as an enforced cutoff of shipping and aviation. Beijing’s forces have practiced the scenario without implementing it. Readers seeing posts that Taiwan is already blockaded should treat those as overstatements of what the November exercises have actually done.
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