FILE – In this photo released by the Taiwan Coast Guard, a Taiwan Coast Guard member monitor Chinese navy vessel operating near the Pengjia Islet north of Taiwan on Thursday, May 23, 2024. (Taiwan Coast Guard via AP, file) On July 4, Beijing announced it had launched a new sea patrol to replace a group of ships that, in June, were an integral part of China’s effort to control waters far from its shoreline. In an extraordinary move last month, Beijing claimed part of the Pacific Ocean as sovereign Chinese water.
On June 6, China’s Ministry of Transport launched “a special maritime law enforcement operation in the waters east of Taiwan Island.” Vessels from the Fujian and Guangdong Maritime Safety Administrations, the East China Sea Navigation Support Center and the East China Sea Rescue Bureau took part, sailing eastward through the Bashi Channel, which separates Taiwan from the Philippines.
According to Beijing, the operation lasted five days and Chinese ships inspected 198 vessels. All the Chinese ships taking part in the operation were civilian, which emphasized the point that Beijing was enforcing its laws over waters it considered part of the People’s Republic of China.
These waters were east of the main island of Taiwan and beyond 12 nautical miles from its shores. Coastal states can claim everything within 12 nautical miles of its shoreline as territorial or sovereign water. This means China, by its actions, was claiming as sovereign a portion of the Pacific recognized by the rest of the world, pursuant to the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea and customary international law, as part of the global commons.
Beijing stated that the maritime action was in response to May 28 talks between Japan and the Philippines to settle their overlapping claims to exclusive economic zones in the area. These zones are the bands of international water 12 to 200 nautical miles from a shore where the coastal state has special rights against all others. Beijing called the Tokyo-Manila talks illegal and soon sent its multi-agency ship formation through the Bashi Channel.
“This special law enforcement operation is a sovereignty declaration with both legal significance and political signaling,” the Communist Party’s semi-official Global Times pointed out on June 7. “It confirms that China has indisputable jurisdiction, law enforcement authority, and management rights over Taiwan and its surrounding waters.”
“The message behind this action is crystal clear: In the face of any heinous acts that infringe on China’s territorial sovereignty and harm China’s national interests, China will act according to the law, never yield an inch, and fight for every inch,” it added.
To eliminate any doubt as to the extent of Beijing’s ambition, Chinese propaganda organs commented on the significance of the action. For instance, Yuyuan Tantian, a social media account associated with the official China Central Television, called the operation a “landmark development,” which established a “coastal governance model” around Taiwan.
“From now on,” the account declared, “the waters east of Taiwan are our ‘coastal waters’— the ocean where we are present, exercise jurisdiction, and govern.”
“What’s different is how openly Beijing has described this most recent maritime expansion,” writes Ray Powell of Stanford University’s Gordian Knot Center for National Security Innovation.
China’s ambitions are growing fast. Beijing admitted that the Taiwan Strait was international water until 2018, when it asserted that the vital waterway was domestic. Moreover, in August 2023, China’s Ministry of Natural Resources updated its infamous nine-dash line claim to almost all of the South China Sea by adding a tenth dash east of Taiwan, suggesting it had claims on Pacific waters beyond the 12 nautical mile limit.
China’s assertion of jurisdiction of a still-undefined portion of the Pacific Ocean adjacent to Taiwan is, as Carl Schuster and Robert Eldridge wrote in the Taipei Times, “a potential stepping stone toward declaring a maritime exclusion zone around Taiwan.”
“Make no mistake, the Communist Party of China seeks total control of Taiwan, including all water and airspace around the island,” James Fanell, a former U.S. Navy captain who served as director of Intelligence and Information Operations for the U.S. Pacific Fleet, told me.
Fanell said “its preference is to use lawfare to obtain control without firing a shot,” but the People’s Liberation Army is ready “to take control by force if lawfare does not succeed,” including “attacks against U.S. and Japanese forces and bases in the region.”
Beijing believes that now is its moment to break through what it calls the “First Island Chain,” a line of islands with Japan in the north and Indonesia in the south, which prevents the Chinese navy and air force from surging into the Pacific. Taiwan sits in the center of this crucial perimeter.
Now, American interests are clearly threatened. The Pentagon’s 2026 National Defense Strategy promises “a strong denial defense along the First Island Chain.”
However, as Powell pointed out just after China’s June operation, “The First Island Chain has been breached.”
Gordon G. Chang is the author of “Plan Red: China’s Project to Destroy America” and “The Coming Collapse of China.” Follow him on X @GordonGChang.
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