Mike Baker

PDB regular listeners know that China's People's Liberation Army, the PLA, has repeatedly paired large-scale military exercises with frequent air and naval patrols around Taiwan, operations that have steadily encroached closer and closer to Taiwan.

and Pratus has become a particular focus of that pressure.

Over the past year, Chinese Coast Guard ships and their maritime militia, consisting of fishing vessels used for paramilitary missions, have consistently harassed the atoll.

Earlier this month, Taiwan's Coast Guard released footage showing two Chinese Coast Guard vessels approaching the island.

Taipei describes it as a sustained effort to normalize a Chinese presence around Taiwan's outlying territories without firing a single shot.

The geography helps explain why Beijing keeps returning there.

Freitas sits roughly 260 miles south of Taiwan's main island, positioned along sea lanes linking the Taiwan Strait and the Bashi Channel.

Notably, those routes would be critical to U.S.

and Chinese submarine movements in any future conflict.

So control of the atoll would give China leverage over one of the region's most sensitive corridors and a strategic foothold just short of Taiwan itself.

That creates a dilemma, not just for Taipei, but for Washington as well.

Taiwanese officials believe the U.S.

would likely assist in defending the island in the event of a Chinese invasion.

But Pretus occupies a grayer space.

The atoll lies within overlapping territorial claims in the South China Sea, inherited from the Republic of China.

Complicating assumptions, of course, about whether the U.S.

would intervene militarily if China moved to seize Pretus.

The ambiguity surrounding the atoll has sharpened concerns in Taipei, where officials worry Beijing could exploit that uncertainty to notch a psychological win without triggering a war.

Of course, Beijing dismissed Taiwan's concern.

The PLA's Southern Theater Command said the drone was part of what it called, quote, normal training around China's Dongsha Island, insisting that the operation was, quote, completely legitimate and lawful, end quote.