China's coast guard carries out patrols east of Taiwan, saying it will step up law enforcement in waters it claims
China's coast guard conducted what it called routine law enforcement patrols in waters east of Taiwan on Saturday, state broadcaster CCTV reported, as Beijing said it would keep strengthening control over waters it claims as its own.
China's coast guard carried out what it described as routine law enforcement patrols in waters east of Taiwan island on Saturday, state broadcaster CCTV reported, in the latest sign of Beijing's determination to assert its presence in waters around the democratically governed island. The patrols are part of a pattern of increased Chinese activity east of Taiwan that has been building since June.
According to CCTV, the coast guard has continued to strengthen control over the waters since the start of October, in order to protect what it called the lawful rights and safety of Chinese people, including Taiwan compatriots. Its spokesperson, Jiang Lue, said the coast guard would continue to step up law enforcement patrols in waters under its jurisdiction, signalling that Saturday's operation was not a one-off but part of an ongoing campaign.
China views Taiwan as its own territory and recognises no claims of sovereignty by Taipei, including over the seas around the island. Beijing's framing of the patrols as law enforcement in its own jurisdictional waters is therefore a legal as well as a military claim: by repeatedly operating there, China seeks to normalise its presence and to establish, in practice, the jurisdiction that Taiwan and many other governments dispute.
Officials in Taipei see the patrols very differently. Taiwan's government rejects Beijing's sovereignty claims outright and has previously described the coast guard patrols east of the island as an unlawful expansion of authority. In July, Taiwan's Mainland Affairs Council said China holds no sovereignty, jurisdiction or law enforcement authority in the waters east of Taiwan, and that repeating an unlawful act does not make it lawful or earn it international recognition.
The deeper worry in Taipei is strategic. Taiwanese officials believe China is using overlapping military, paramilitary and civilian assets to practise for a potential maritime blockade of the island. The waters east of Taiwan matter enormously in that scenario: they are the route through which supplies and support from allies would have to reach Taiwan in a crisis, and they are also the area from which a blockade would be hardest to break.
Those concerns have been echoed in Washington. Randall Schriver, chairman of the US Congress's US-China Economic and Security Review Commission, told a forum in Taipei on 20 October that a persistent Chinese coast guard presence east of Taiwan was among the most troubling recent developments he had observed, calling it highly destabilising. He argued that patrols presented as routine law enforcement could in fact extend Beijing's sovereignty claim and serve as part of its legal, political and information campaign against Taiwan.
The same day, Taiwan's defence ministry reported 27 Chinese military aircraft, including nuclear-capable H-6 bombers, taking part in a joint combat readiness patrol near the island — a separate military operation that underlined how the coast guard patrols fit into a much larger pattern of pressure. Taiwan's coast guard, which generally does not openly carry weapons, is regularly deployed to shadow and warn away Chinese vessels, and Taipei has been strengthening coordination between its navy and coast guard as a second line of defence.
The east-coast patrols also sit within a wider contest over the seas around China. Taiwan has reported repeated encounters with Chinese coast guard vessels near the Pratas Islands in the South China Sea, and Taipei has accused Beijing of using law enforcement and scientific research as cover for harassment, seeking to create an illusion of de facto jurisdiction during peacetime. China's foreign ministry, by contrast, maintains that the waters belong to China and that its activities there are lawful.
For the region, the steady drumbeat of patrols raises the risk of miscalculation. Each encounter between Chinese and Taiwanese vessels carries the possibility of a collision or confrontation, and each side's public statements harden the other's position. The United States and its allies, which support freedom of navigation in the region, watch the east-coast pattern closely, while stopping short of direct intervention in individual encounters.
What happens next is likely to be more of the same, by Beijing's own account: Jiang Lue's promise of continued and stepped-up patrols suggests the coast guard presence east of Taiwan is now a standing feature rather than a passing phase. For Taipei, the challenge will be to respond firmly without triggering an incident, and to keep the support of partners who share its interest in the waters remaining open. The patrols may be described as routine, but in the Taiwan Strait, routine is itself the message.
