Chinese Coast Guard vessels are increasingly becoming one of Beijing’s main tools for pressuring Taiwan—conducting law enforcement operations in waters around Taiwan and even entering restricted or prohibited zones.

The latest incident was triggered by Japan and the Philippines launching negotiations to delimit their exclusive economic zones (EEZs) in the Pacific, a move China claimed infringed on its “rights and interests.”

This time, however, Beijing did not respond with its usual People’s Liberation Army military exercises. Instead, it deployed government vessels to carry out law enforcement operations.

This represents a lower-intensity way of asserting sovereignty, one that is relatively less likely to trigger an accidental military confrontation. It also helps explain why Chinese Coast Guard activities are particularly frequent and concentrated in waters Beijing claims as its own, including around the Diaoyutai Islands, Scarborough Shoal, and Second Thomas Shoal in the South China Sea.

“The Coast Guard and the Maritime Safety Administration are, by nature, domestic law enforcement agencies. Their involvement symbolizes Beijing’s framing of Taiwan-related affairs as an internal matter,” said Lin Ying-yu, associate professor at Tamkang University’s Graduate Institute of International Affairs and Strategic Studies.

What should concern Taiwan even more is that Chinese government vessels have now taken concrete law enforcement action—effectively breaking a long-standing tacit understanding across the Taiwan Strait not to infringe on each other’s administrative jurisdiction.

CommonWealth Magazine analyzed 1.8 billion vessel-tracking records to identify the movements of 140 Chinese Coast Guard ships, revealing where they operate, the ambitions behind their enforcement activities, and why Beijing is willing to break long-standing cross-Strait understandings.

What exactly is China trying to achieve? >> https://hi.cw.com.tw/u/k88ef4R/

Have you read?

• Why China’s “Gray Zone” Campaign Has Extended to Eastern Taiwan
• How Taiwan’s First Island Chain Allies Quietly Build a Coalition Against China’s Gray-Zone Playbook
• [Exclusive] NSC Secretary-General Joseph Wu: “What We Fear Most Is a Public Grown Numb to China's Pressure”

Uploaded by Ian Huang