Taiwan Strait

Nothing unusual is happening in the transit data

The Taiwan Strait is among the most closely watched waterways in the world, and it is running within a few percent of both its 2019–2023 baseline and its level a year ago. On a board where neighbours are down by a third and by nine tenths, that is worth stating rather than assuming.

This is the reading most worth checking repeatedly, precisely because a change here would matter more than a change almost anywhere else.

What abnormal has looked like

The record low is February 2020, at 190 a day against a baseline near 246 — the early weeks of the pandemic. The record high is May 2021. Both were sustained shifts visible over months rather than single-day spikes, which is a useful calibration: if this route changes character, this page will show it as a level shift, not a blip.

The limits of a vessel count

A transit count records that ships passed. It carries nothing about what they were carrying, who owned them, what flag they flew, or what was happening around them at the time. On a route where the questions people ask are mostly political, that boundary is worth being explicit about — this page can tell you traffic is normal, and nothing beyond that.