TAIPEI (Taiwan News) — China has ramped up pressure on Taiwan by deploying an average of two coast guard ships per month in waters east of Taiwan since June, Bloomberg reported.
The patrols covered 27,100 square nautical miles, according to Bloomberg calculations using ship-tracking data. The ships remained outside Taiwan-claimed waters but came as close as 55.5 kilometers from its eastern coast.
The Chinese coast guard said the patrols were routine and pledged to increase them to protect Beijing’s maritime rights.
The Taiwan Coast Guard Administration told Bloomberg that this was an attempt to “leverage ‘law enforcement patrols’ to establish a new normal for its maritime presence in the waters east of Taiwan.” It said it had sent ships promptly to monitor Chinese coast guard activities.
Controlling waters east of Taiwan would be vital to enforcing an effective blockade during a Chinese invasion, Bloomberg said. Disrupting shipping there could also have global implications for commodity flows.
Jing Ge, an instructor at Florida International University’s politics and international relations department, said, “If the Taiwan Strait is the front door, the eastern waters have often been treated as the back door,” Bloomberg reported. She added that “Beijing wants to demonstrate this back door is no longer uncontested.”
On June 1, China sent two large coast guard patrol ships, the Daishan and the Baita, to waters east of Taiwan. Later that month, it sent the larger law-enforcement ships Haixun 09 and Haixun 06 to circle Taiwan.
They were accompanied by China’s largest deep-sea survey ship and a rescue vessel, according to Bloomberg.
China’s coast guard has expanded its role beyond maritime law enforcement since the introduction of a coast guard law in 2021, Bloomberg said. The law allows the coast guard to “take all necessary measures, including the use of weapons” in response to what Beijing considers infringements on China’s sovereignty at sea.
The US-China Economic and Security Review Commission said that “using the CCG rather than the PLA Navy avoids military confrontations and allows Beijing to portray these activities as law enforcement while establishing the persistent presence necessary for a future blockade,” per Bloomberg.
“What Beijing is testing east of Taiwan is whether it can gradually rewrite expectations about who governs navigation and maritime order in the Western Pacific,” Zack Liao, a political risk analyst at the China Strategic Risks Institute, said. “That means the response should also be international.”
