China is opening a new front in its pressure campaign against Taiwan, sending ships to its east to drive home a political point: Beijing claims not only the island itself but also the seas around it.
The China Coast Guard announced on Saturday that its ships would conduct “law-enforcement patrols” in the Western Pacific waters east of Taiwan, a self-ruled island of 23 million people that Beijing claims as its territory.
The Western Pacific is crowded with commercial traffic and would be a vital arena if Beijing ever tried to blockade or invade Taiwan. China’s coast guard ships are often hulking, well-armed vessels that complement the country’s naval forces. They have been vital to Beijing’s efforts to dominate the disputed South China Sea, sometimes by swarming waters, ramming vessels or blasting crews with powerful water cannons.
During the patrols, the coast guard ships “will continue to strengthen law-enforcement patrols in waters under China’s jurisdiction and firmly safeguard China’s territorial sovereignty and maritime rights and interests,” the China Coast Guard said on Saturday.
By Sunday, the two Chinese ships, the Xiushan and the Chongming, were between 80 and 140 miles off Taiwan’s east coast, said Ou Yu-fei, an official for Taiwan’s Coast Guard Administration.
Chinese coast guard ships have operated east of Taiwan before, including as part of military exercises. The difference now is that the patrols are intensive and coordinated, and accompanied by declarations of a political intent, said Ray Powell, a former U.S. Air Force officer who is the director of SeaLight, a group that monitors and is critical of Chinese maritime pressure activities against its neighbors.
“With these actions, they’re into the blue Pacific,” he said. “China just keeps squeezing Taiwan like a boa constrictor, trying to tighten its grip over lines of communication.”
Beijing’s high-profile deployment of these ships east of Taiwan are a step forward in its efforts to pressure the island by challenging Taiwanese control of these seas and practicing steps that could be part of a blockade.
The latest patrols followed similar ones in June, when Chinese coast guard, maritime safety and scientific exploration ships engaged in operations in the same waters. The United States, Britain, France and Germany issued statements last month criticizing the Coast Guard operations off east Taiwan.
“It’s another indication that China intends to continue to put the squeeze on Taiwan, warning that in the future it’s going to find itself increasingly isolated and cut off,” Mr. Powell said on Sunday.
Taiwan’s government responded to the latest Chinese patrols with deployments of its own, and rejected Beijing’s claims of sovereignty. The Taiwan Coast Guard sent at least two ships to track the Chinese vessels and said it would “take all necessary measures to forcefully expel Chinese vessels that engage in harassment in our national waters.”
China “has no jurisdiction or related rights” over these waters, and “none of its government vessels have the authority to enforce laws there,” the Mainland Affairs Council, which oversees relations with Beijing, said on Saturday.
The seas in question are outside of Taiwan’s territorial waters. They are within waters where Japan, the Philippines and Taiwan assert overlapping rights to economic activities such as mining and fishing.
The Chinese patrols east of Taiwan in June began after Japan and the Philippines announced that they were in formal negotiations over their competing claims to exclusive economic zones and continental shelves. Beijing condemned the talks, arguing that because it has sovereignty over Taiwan, it also has a legal stake in that dispute.
China first sent out coast guard ships, which were then joined by maritime safety ships in what the country’s Ministry of Transport called a “maritime traffic law enforcement operation.”
Taiwanese officials have said that the Chinese coast guard ships radioed at least three commercial ships, demanding information about the ships’ crews, destinations and other details.
Taiwan has told commercial ships passing through the area to ignore such demands from China. But a Chinese crew member on one ship complied, supplying information to a Chinese coast guard officer, said two Taiwanese officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive information. The compliance by the ship was first reported by Agence France-Presse, which said it was a Singapore-flagged cargo carrier.
Up to now, Chinese coast guard patrols around Taiwan have mostly been in the strait between the island and the mainland. Since 2024, China has regularly patrolled near Kinmen, a set of islands near the Chinese coast that is controlled by Taiwan.
China’s navy has also continued expanding patrols and exercises around Taiwan. In July, Chinese and Russian navies will hold a joint exercise off Qingdao, a city on China’s northeast coast, and forces from both sides would then “conduct a joint maritime patrol” in the Pacific Ocean, China’s Ministry of National Defense said on Sunday.
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