Taiwan National Day 2026: Will Beijing Answer Lai's October 10 Speech With Drills or the Coast Guard?
President Lai Ching-te speaks in front of the Presidential Office in Taipei on Saturday, October 10, for Taiwan’s National Day. It’s his third as president. The first one, in 2024, was followed four days later by Joint Sword-2024B, a named PLA exercise around the whole island.
Taipei is braced for something similar. The question worth asking is what form it takes, because the evidence from 2026 points somewhere other than a repeat of 2024.
The 2024 Template
The pattern Beijing set in 2024 was simple. Lai said something in a set-piece speech. Chinese state media called it provocation. The PLA’s Eastern Theater Command then launched a named drill.
In May 2024 his inaugural address brought Joint Sword-2024A. His October 10 speech that year said the People’s Republic of China had no right to represent Taiwan and that the two sides were “not subordinate to each other.” On October 14 came Joint Sword-2024B, with Chinese forces in the Strait and to the north, south and east of the island, and coast guard ships circling Kinmen and Matsu.
Taiwanese officials guessed beforehand that the drill was coming whatever Lai said. They turned out to be right. The speech was a pretext. Beijing had already decided. That’s still the most useful way to read it.
2026 Has Been Quiet in the Air
Here’s what doesn’t fit the template. PLA air activity around Taiwan has been well below 2025 levels all year.
Taiwan’s defense ministry recorded 270 sorties in January, 190 in February, 173 in March, 229 in April, 274 in May, 208 in June and 260 in July. Every month ran 40 to 60 percent below the same month a year earlier. The PLA still flew its joint combat readiness patrols, roughly one large set-piece a month, so the capacity is there. The volume isn’t.
Analysts have offered several reasons. Purges at the top of the Central Military Commission removed two vice-chairmen in January. Diplomacy with Washington mattered too: air activity dropped to zero on May 14 and 15 while Donald Trump was in Beijing for his summit with Xi Jinping. Beijing seems to have decided that loud military shows cost more than they earn while it has things it wants from the US.
The last big one was Justice Mission 2025 in late December, which put 130 aircraft up in a single day and fired rockets toward the island. Nothing in 2026 has come close.
The Coast Guard Has Been Busy
While the air numbers fell, the sea numbers rose.
China Coast Guard ships began a continuous presence east of Taiwan in June and have rotated fresh task groups through ever since. The current one, led by the cutter Zhujiajian, was still there last week. Fujian’s coast guard says it has run “routine” patrols near Kinmen since the start of September. Taiwan’s own coast guard logged the first Chinese incursion off Penghu this summer and seized two Chinese trawlers there in one week. Official and government ship detections around Taiwan jumped from 46 in May to 110 in June and stayed above 100 in July.
This is the tool Beijing has been reaching for. It’s cheaper than a named exercise. It draws less attention in Washington. And unlike a three-day drill, it doesn’t end.
Three Ways This Could Go
Pose the question directly. What does Beijing want Saturday’s response to achieve, and what does it want to avoid?
It wants to punish Lai in public and to keep pressing the idea that Taiwan’s waters are China’s to police. It wants to avoid wrecking whatever it’s negotiating with the Trump administration, and it has spent most of 2026 avoiding exactly the kind of spectacle a named drill creates.
That leaves three plausible outcomes.
A named exercise. Joint Sword or Strait Thunder or Justice Mission with a 2026 suffix, announced within a week of the speech. Possible, especially if Lai’s wording gives Beijing an easy headline. But it would break the restraint China has shown all year.
A coast guard surge. More cutters at Kinmen and Matsu, a bigger group east of Taiwan, maybe the first real attempt to board a Taiwanese vessel, all framed as law enforcement. This fits the 2026 pattern best. It also moves China closer to the quarantine scenario Taiwan’s planners worry about most.
A joint combat readiness patrol with louder rhetoric. One heavy day in the air, a fierce Taiwan Affairs Office statement, and then back to normal. The cheapest option and the one that changes least.
The likeliest answer is the second, perhaps with the third on top. If a named PLA exercise does come, it will tell you that Beijing’s calculation about Washington has changed, which is bigger news than anything Lai says on Saturday.
What Lai Is Likely to Say
Expect continuity. Lai has kept to the line that the Republic of China and the People’s Republic of China are not subordinate to each other, and he’s unlikely to drop it on the biggest stage of the year. Expect him to talk up the defense budget fight, too, since the opposition-controlled legislature still has to vote on his NT$145.7 billion supplement for drones and missile defense.
None of that will be new to Beijing. Which is the point. The speech is the date. What China does after it will be the message.