Tensions across the Taiwan Strait have flared again this week, after China’s most advanced domestically built aircraft carrier sailed through the contested waterway on Tuesday, just 24 hours after Taiwan launched a five-day military exercise focused on repelling a potential Chinese attack, Taiwan’s Ministry of National Defense confirmed. The Fujian, China’s third and latest aircraft carrier, is no stranger to the strait: it first completed a trial transit through the 180-kilometer waterway that separates mainland China from the self-governing island of Taiwan back in September 2023, and made its first crossing as an officially commissioned active-duty vessel this past December. The warship was formally commissioned into the People’s Liberation Army Navy in November 2024, and according to the U.S. Naval Institute, it holds the distinction of being the largest non-nuclear powered aircraft carrier currently in operation anywhere in the world. Outfitted with a modern electromagnetic catapult launch system, the Fujian is widely recognized as technologically superior to China’s two older aircraft carriers, the Liaoning and the Shandong. For decades, Beijing has maintained its territorial claim over Taiwan, which has governed itself autonomously since 1949, and Chinese officials have repeatedly declined to rule out the use of military force to reunify the island with the mainland. In recent years, Chinese military activity near Taiwan has grown exponentially: regular patrols of naval vessels and combat aircraft around the island now occur on an almost daily basis, as Beijing ramps up political and military pressure on the Taipei government. Taiwan’s drills, which kicked off on Monday, are explicitly designed to test and refine the island’s military protocols for responding to a full-scale Chinese invasion, according to Taiwanese defense officials. The latest transit comes amid long-standing trans-Pacific tensions over the Taiwan issue, with the United States and several of its key allies conducting periodic freedom of navigation transits through the Taiwan Strait to send a clear signal to Beijing that they oppose any unilateral attempt to alter the status quo through force. U.S. Navy warships regularly sail through the waterway, a practice that has drawn fierce condemnation from China, which views such operations as provocative violations of its territorial sovereignty.