China has two aircraft carriers at sea as Taiwan counts more than 100 Chinese ships in the Western Pacific

China had more than 100 navy and coast guard vessels deployed across the Western Pacific as of Tuesday 3 November, according to Joseph Wu, the secretary-general of Taiwan's National Security Council. At the same time, satellite imagery and tracking reports show two of China's three aircraft carriers at sea in different parts of the region, Taiwan News and the defence site Zona Militar reported.

Wu set out the figure in a post on X that called China a big bully and cited the maritime deployment alongside a rise in Chinese military flights around Taiwan. He said Taiwan would stay alert and would neither provoke Beijing nor give in to its pressure. In a second post he accused the People's Liberation Army of bullying Taiwan and other countries in the region through military and grey-zone coercion, and said Taiwan would keep strengthening its defences, Taiwan News reported.

The new count is roughly double the one Wu gave a week earlier. On 28 October, as the Liaoning carrier group sailed east of the first island chain, he published a map showing 34 PLA Navy warships and 19 China Coast Guard and other ships around Taiwan and in parts of the Western Pacific, TVBS reported at the time.

Two carriers in two seas

Taiwan News cited the Taiwan Security Monitor as saying the Liaoning carrier strike group was in the Philippine Sea while the Fujian was in the South China Sea, and that the two deployments coincided with heavier PLA air activity around Taiwan.

Zona Militar reported that European Sentinel-2 satellite imagery taken on 2 November placed the Fujian south-east of Hainan Island, about 115 kilometres from Sanya and the Yulin naval base, heading east. The site said the images confirm the ship's position and direction but not whether it was training, conducting trials or doing something else. The Fujian is China's first carrier fitted with electromagnetic catapults, which let it launch heavier aircraft than the ski-jump decks of the Liaoning and Shandong.

The same report placed the Liaoning in the Philippine Sea off the east coast of Luzon, escorted by the destroyers Anshan, Wuxi and Huainan according to a US Naval Institute fleet tracker dated 30 October. It added that the Shandong reportedly left dry dock at Yulin on 1 November after about nine months of maintenance and appeared to be starting sea trials, although it did not yet look ready to resume flight operations.

A gap in US carrier cover

The Chinese deployments come as the only US carrier in the region moves away. Newsweek reported that the USS Theodore Roosevelt was heading towards the Indian Ocean to become the fifth American carrier sent to the Middle East during the Iran war, where it will relieve the Japan-based USS George Washington. The magazine said this leaves the Western Pacific without a US carrier for several weeks, the third such gap in just over two years.

Activity around Taiwan

Taiwan's defence ministry reported 49 Chinese military aircraft sorties, six PLA Navy vessels and six other official ships around Taiwan in the 24 hours to 6 am on Tuesday, with 31 of the aircraft crossing the median line. In the 24 hours to 6 am on Wednesday it counted 22 sorties, seven navy vessels and five official ships, and said Taiwanese forces sent combat air patrols, navy ships and coastal missile units to respond, Taiwan News reported.

Why it matters

Having two carriers at sea in separate seas, a third preparing to return and more than 100 ships spread across the region shows how far China's navy and coast guard can now extend at once. Taiwan's government is presenting the deployment as coercion aimed at Taiwan and its neighbours, and it coincides with a period in which the United States has no carrier on hand in the Western Pacific.