Is the PLA Preparing to Assassinate Taiwan's Leadership?

Satellite imagery obtained by the Japan Institute for National Fundamentals (JINF) indicates the People's Liberation Army (PLA) has built a new structure. It stands beside the PLA's "mock Presidential Office" at a training site in the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region.

Experts believe the new building is a mock Judicial Yuan (Taiwan's Ministry of Justice). A 280-meter-long underground tunnel links both facilities. Defense analysts interpret the full-scale replicas as preparation for a potential leadership-targeting operation against Taiwan's president.

Zhurihe Replica Complex

The mock Presidential Office stands inside the Zhurihe Combined Tactics Training Base in Inner Mongolia, the PLA's largest training range (about 1,066 square kilometers). It featured in a 2015 live-fire army exercise reported by China Central Television (CCTV).

Analysts had already confirmed a mock Ministry of Foreign Affairs in addition to the mock Presidential Office. Publicizing the Presidential Office replica has also been read as a psychological operation aimed at Taiwan.

By August 2020, the PLA began building the newly identified mock Judicial Yuan and largely finished it in 2021. By November 2023, it had started on a red-roofed building next door and had mostly finished it by April 2024. The design resembles a facility inside the Ministry of National Defense Armed Forces Reserve Command, which oversees national mobilization. It is located across from Taiwan's Judicial Yuan in Taipei.

Repeated Drills

The mock Presidential Office training zone has nearly tripled in area since 2020.

Satellite imagery shows repeated training around the complex. In July 2022, the PLA placed obstacles at intersections leading to simulated Presidential and Foreign Ministry offices, then cleared them to allow armored vehicles to advance.

Large numbers of armored vehicles in August 2022 suggested a brigade-level opposing-force drill aimed at a notional defense of the Presidential Office. Activity resumed in August 2025, with armored vehicles and roadblocks again deployed around the compound, evidence that the exercises are ongoing.

Xi Intensifies Realistic Training

Since becoming chairman of the Central Military Commission in 2012, Xi Jinping has pushed the PLA to intensify "realistic" combat training. In March 2018, he presided, in combat fatigues, over the first PLA annual training session and called for a comprehensive strengthening of such drills.

JINF research fellow Maki Nakagawa said the Zhurihe base has been rapidly upgraded under Xi and is now being used for increasingly realistic exercises.

"By adding a mock Judicial Yuan to the mock Presidential Office, and even linking them with an underground tunnel, the message to Taiwan may be: even if you build tunnels, there is no escape," she said.

Nakagawa added that the move appears intended to ratchet up both psychological and military pressure on Taiwan.

(Read the article in Japanese.)

Author: Takashi Arimoto