TAIPEI (Taiwan News) — The U.S. intelligence community has predicted China will increase its military activity around Taiwan this year and attempt to exert greater pressure on Taiwan's government to erode its political sovereignty.

The U.S. Intelligence Community's 2022 Annual Threat Assessment, published Tuesday (March 8) by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), states that China will continue to use "coordinated, whole-of-government tools to demonstrate strength and compel neighbors to acquiesce to Beijing’s preferences, including its territorial and maritime claims and assertions of sovereignty over Taiwan."

The report lists several other developments within its chapter on China which are of key concern to Taiwan’s defense, including Beijing’s accelerated efforts to give the People’s Liberation Army the capabilities needed to fight a large-scale, sustained conflict with the U.S.

The steps China is taking to achieve that goal include: fielding new hypersonic missiles that put American military assets in the Pacific at risk, continuing the largest ever nuclear force expansion in its history with "more survivable, more diverse" warheads, and integrating space technology platforms for "counterspace operations" against U.S. and allied satellites.

A key excerpt from the report on China’s posture toward Taiwan states that China will respond to what it sees as boosted engagement between the U.S. and Taiwan. "We expect that friction will grow as China continues to increase military activity around the island, and Taiwan’s leaders resist Beijing’s pressure for progress toward unification," it says. "China’s control over Taiwan probably would disrupt global supply chains for semiconductor chips because Taiwan dominates production."