The PBOC's foreign currency desk logs Taiwan-adjacent flow, not naval movements, and this week the two started disagreeing. China Coast Guard vessels moved into waters east of Taiwan, the island's Pacific-facing side, rather than the strait median or Bashi Channel where every prior gray-zone deployment has sat. Taiwan's defense ministry logged 17 PLA vessels and 8 aircraft in the same 24-hour window, per Taiwan News. Premier Li's economic working group has treated the strait as a contained variable since March, tariff-contingent easing that assumes the strait stays the strait. A patrol behind the island's rear approach is not priced into that assumption, or, more precisely, it was not priced into it as of the working group's last signal.

Taipei answered from a different ministry the same day: the largest strategic reserve overhaul in its history, per the Times of India, without published fuel, grain, or munitions targets. The PBOC's open-market desk does not set policy on troop movements, but it does set policy on the currency exposure that a reserve build of unstated scale generates for mainland-linked trade financing running through Hong Kong correspondent banks. East Asia Forum's report of a Politburo purge delaying Xi's invasion timeline would ordinarily let that desk sit still. It has not adjusted its signaling window, still tied to the November fixing, which means the desk is reading the coast guard patrol as consistent with delay, not contradicting it. The HKMA's own SPM unit has until that same fixing to decide whether Taiwan-linked counterparty exposure gets a separate risk weighting or stays folded into general China exposure.