Xi Jinping told the People's Liberation Army this week to accelerate military modernization and named Taiwan reunification as an inseparable part of the national rejuvenation project. That framing is not new. What changed is the calendar attached to it. Xi's remarks, delivered to senior PLA command at a Central Military Commission session and carried by state broadcaster CCTV on July 1, dropped the phrase "new historic missions" back into circulation, a formulation last emphasized at this intensity in the run-up to the 2027 centennial of the PLA's founding. Beijing has not yet set a date for unification. It has set a date for readiness, and the two are being written to converge.

The near-term test lands in Washington, not Beijing. A senior US envoy this week urged Taipei to build out drone swarm capability rather than continue procuring large, crewed platforms optimized for a strait-crossing invasion that increasingly resembles the last war rather than the next one. President Lai Ching-te (inaugurated May 2024, succeeding Tsai Ing-wen) faces a legislature still controlled by opposition parties skeptical of defense budget increases, the same mismatch Chen has flagged before between Taiwan's procurement posture and a PLA doctrine that now treats Japan and the United States as first-hour combatants. Xi's speech gives Beijing's 2027 marker renewed specificity. Whether Taipei's legislature funds the asymmetric shift Washington is now recommending will be visible in the next budget cycle, not in a communique.