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How China’s New Naval and Air Sites Would Aid an Attack on Taiwan
Satellite images show major infrastructure expansion, including on the Taiwan Strait.
China is undertaking a large-scale build-out of infrastructure along its east coast, including air and naval sites that show its growing readiness for a potential conflict over Taiwan.
Satellite images and other open-source material examined by The Wall Street Journal illustrate how these facilities would strengthen China’s hand if it launched an invasion of the island democracy. Beijing claims Taiwan as its territory and has pledged to take it, by force if necessary.
The sites range from a large new base for amphibious warships to a multibillion-dollar airport that sits around 3 miles from front-line Taiwanese islands. “All of it goes to supporting China’s one military planning scenario, which is a Taiwan scenario,” said Michael Dahm, a retired U.S. Navy intelligence officer and senior resident fellow at the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies who closely tracks these projects.
The investments boost a sweeping effort under President Xi Jinping for his country to become equipped and capable of taking Taiwan. A cross-strait invasion to seize the territory would be highly complex. Whether Xi intends to carry out such an offensive remains an open question.
U.S. military officials have stepped up warnings in recent months about Beijing’s intentions, saying the country is on a dangerous path. China is modernizing equipment from warheads to warplanes, conducting ever-expanding military exercises—and pouring concrete.
The facility isn’t on the Taiwan Strait, which could be an advantage, said Dahm, because that waterway would likely be a “free-fire zone” in a conflict. Instead of concentrating its warships, China’s invasion fleet could sail for Taiwan from different points along the coast.
That approach would require more planning to ensure forces show up at the right place at the right time. But it would complicate decisions by China’s adversaries on what to target, when and where.
The facility’s size suggests it was built for expanded wartime use, said Collin Koh, a senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore. It could serve as a jumpoff point for part of an invasion fleet heading for northern Taiwan, where the territory’s capital city, Taipei, is located, said Koh.
Big berths
Closer to Taiwan, a naval facility in Yueqing Bay has a new pier measuring over a mile long, allowing a large number of ships to operate from there. Around 20 vessels were visible on a recent day, including tank transports, ship-to-shore landing craft, tankers and coast-guard cutters—all of which would play a role in a Taiwan contingency.
Air support
Directly across from Taiwan in China’s Fujian province sits a new and expanding helicopter base. Army helicopters flying from here—carrying troops to Taiwan or providing supporting fire for landing forces, say—would be well positioned to reach the southwest beaches of Taiwan’s main island. A number of those beaches are considered likely landing sites for an amphibious assault.
The helicopter airfield could also support an attack on the Penghu islands, a significant Taiwanese archipelago in the strait. Seizing the Penghus early in a conflict would give China crucial momentum, allowing it to use the captured territory to sustain attacks on Taiwan’s main island a few dozen miles away.
Chinese drones have also used the airfield, said Damien Symon, a researcher at an intelligence consulting firm called the Intel Lab, who studies the facility using satellite images. The base is being expanded further, with recent imagery showing land being cleared in at least two adjacent areas, possibly for more helipads, he said.
Civilian spaces
Mega-airports are popping up around China, but at least two are in locations that would make them attractive to Chinese military commanders: right on the Taiwan Strait. If a crisis erupted, Beijing would likely suspend commercial flights to and from these facilities.
With multiple runways, hangars, abundant fuel, equipment for loading aircraft and a range of other logistics capabilities, these large airfields could quickly be repurposed for military use.
They could serve as forward refueling points or support warplanes whose main airfields have been hit, military analysts said. They could also act as staging areas where troops and war materiel can be brought from other parts of China to be transported to Taiwan, where Chinese forces in battle would need constant resupply of ammunition, spare parts and other items, possibly for months.
One of the airports is sprawled across Dadeng island in the Taiwan Strait. Chinese dredgers worked for years to double the island’s size and make land for the Xiamen Xiang’an International Airport. The facility, expected to be operational next year, now sits just 2.3 miles from Kinmen, an outlying Taiwanese archipelago that could be an early Chinese target in a full-scale invasion.
It’s not just its location that would make the airport valuable for military purposes. In addition to supporting tens of millions of passengers each year, it is designed to be a hub for air-cargo logistics. That means it has robust rail and road connectivity, big warehouses and loads of equipment to rapidly move goods.
In the northern Taiwan Strait, at another civilian airport, a new runway has emerged right on the water. The billion-dollar expansion of the facility, located near the Chinese city of Fuzhou, creates space for a lot more aircraft to park, taxi and operate.
Graphics sources: Maxar (Pudong naval base in 2020 and 2025, Pudong pier close-up, Pudong rail siding, Xiamen Xiang’an International Airport in 2025); Google Earth (Pudong naval base buried tanks, Yuhuan naval base in 2018 and 2025, Zhangpu heliport in 2019, Xiamen Xiang’an International Airport from 2014 to 2024, Fuzhou-Changle airport in 2021 and 2025); PlanetLabs (Zhangpu heliport in 2025)
Write to Niharika Mandhana at niharika.mandhana@wsj.com and Camille Bressange at camille.bressange@wsj.com
