US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi visits Taipei. Beijing responds with the largest military exercises around Taiwan in decades, announcing live-fire areas on multiple sides of the island and firing ballistic missiles that overflew it, alongside trade measures and the suspension of several bilateral dialogue channels with Washington.
Why it mattersAugust 2022 is the hinge of the current period. The exercises themselves ended; the changes they introduced did not. This is where encirclement-style activity became an available instrument and where the median line stopped functioning as a restraint.