In July of 2015, China’s state media aired footage of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) conducting a simulated special forces operation. Generally, for an authoritarian regime to display its military might is not out of the ordinary — it’s a means of deterring a state’s adversaries abroad and its own citizens from dissent. However, this was no generic military footage. Those watching from Taiwan couldn’t help but notice a crucial detail: the building that the PLA is assaulting looks identical to the Presidential Office Building in Taipei. Satellite imagery of the Zhurihe Training Base, situated deep within Inner Mongolia, later...
