China is pulling on 'critical seams' between the US and Taiwan

China is relying more on its Coast Guard to ramp up pressure on Taiwan, deploying its ships in a more aggressive manner near Taiwan’s territory, including islands that are just a few miles from mainland China.

China’s Coast Guard (CCG), a large and militarized force, has had a prominent role in confrontations at sea with the Philippines and Japan, and its increasing presence around Taiwan and its outlying islands is meant to challenge Taipei and its international partners in a way that makes it harder for them to respond.

The trend has been most visible around Kinmen, a Taiwan-controlled island within sight of Fujian Province, where the CCG has acted more assertively since a mid-February incident in which Taiwan’s Coast Guard pursued a Chinese boat that entered what Taipei claims as prohibited waters.

While fleeing, the boat capsized, killing two of its passengers. Afterward, Beijing declared that there were no restricted or prohibited waters around Taiwan’s outlying islands, scrapping its tacit but longstanding acknowledgement of those designations. The CCG responded by sending vessels into the “restricted and prohibited” waters around Kinmen and even boarding a Taiwanese tourist boat — an action that “diverged from the status quo that has held since the 1990s,” when the “restricted waters” concept was implemented, Christopher Sharman, director of the China Maritime Studies Institute at the US Naval War College, wrote in testimony this month to a US House of Representatives committee.

Since February, CCG vessels have regularly patrolled near Kinmen and entered prohibited and restricted waters around it and other Taiwan-controlled islands along China’s coast more than a dozen times, including during drills in early May in which CCG and other official vessels entered waters around Kinmen simultaneously for the first time, Sharman wrote.

China’s activity around those islands is seen as an opportunistic response to the February incident, using it as a pretext to increase pressure on Taiwan in the period between its presidential election in January and the inauguration of President Lai Ching-te on May 20. The head of Taiwan’s National Security Bureau said in early May that Beijing was taking “a carrot-and-stick approach,” using “gray zone” tactics — actions meant to pressure a rival without crossing the threshold into combat — such as incursions near those islands, alongside “perks,” such as cross-strait economic initiatives.

While Beijing has long sought to isolate and undermine Taipei, its coast guard’s growing role in that effort is notable. The CCG is the largest force of its kind in the world by ship count, and those vessels have “improved qualitatively” in recent years, Sharman wrote, describing them as “larger, faster, more maneuverable, and physically imposing.” While other coast guards have distinct law-enforcement roles and are under civilian control, the CCG has been increasingly militarized. In 2018, it was moved under the People’s Armed Police, which reports to China’s Central Military Commission. The CCG has also been granted expanding authorities, including in waters Beijing claims as its “jurisdiction,” and authorized to conduct military operations.

The CCG’s alignment with China’s military was on display after Lai’s inauguration. China’s Joint Sword-2024A military exercise, which began on May 23, was viewed as a planned response to the inauguration. It saw Beijing for the first time announce drills near Taiwan’s outlying islands of Kinmen, Matsu, Wuqiu, and Dongyin. (Wuqiu is part of the Kinmen island group and Dongyin is part of the Matsu group.) Alongside Chinese military activity, the Fujian Province Coast Guard led a “comprehensive law enforcement exercise” during which its vessels came within 3 miles of Wuqiu and Dongyin, the first time CCG vessels had entered those waters, the Center for Strategic and International Studies said in an analysis of the exercise.

The CCG role in the exercise, which included "harassment" drills involving mock inspections of civilian ships off Taiwan’s east coast, “suggests greater military-law enforcement cooperation not only in the Taiwan Strait but also surrounding Taiwan,” the CSIS analysis said, adding that improved joint operations “could enhance China’s ability to quarantine or blockade the main island of Taiwan or any of Taiwan’s outlying islands — steps which China could take in the future to significantly intensify pressure on Taiwan.”

Beijing may task its coast guard with carrying out such a quarantine or blockade so it could portray it as a law-enforcement action rather than a military operation in order “to deflect and dilute international criticism and pressure,” CSIS experts said in an assessment published this month. Even before Joint Sword-2024A, Chinese state media said the “Kinmen model” of “law enforcement inspections” by its coast guard “can also be applied to Matsu and Penghu islands, and even the entire Taiwan Strait.”

China’s activity near Kinmen and Matsu is often overshadowed by its military operations around Taiwan itself, but many experts have highlighted those islands’ vulnerability. Most of them are just a few miles off the Chinese coast, their historical and administrative links to Taipei are relatively weak, and the US commitment to their defense is “less robust” than its officially ambiguous commitment to defend Taiwan, according to Andrew Chubb, a fellow at the Asia Society Policy Institute’s Center for China Analysis.

“While the nearest potential target, Kinmen, has a significant population and is heavily guarded, a quick occupying action against the Wuchius or uninhabited features in the Matsu Islands offer the PRC options to make discernible tactical advances in the Strait with minimal risk,” Chubb wrote in a February 2023 report, referring to the People’s Republic of China. A more recent survey of dozens of US and Taiwanese experts found that most saw a quarantine or seizure of one of Taiwan’s outlying islands as a likely move if Beijing wanted to punish Taiwan or to force unification and that few of them saw the US as likely to respond militarily to such action.

Sharman highlighted that gap in his testimony, writing that China’s ongoing “gray zone” operations “target critical seams,” as Taiwan’s outlying islands are not covered by the US’s Taiwan Relations Act and Washington does not recognize Taipei’s “prohibited” and “restricted” waters. China’s law-enforcement operations “within Taiwan’s prohibited or restricted waters, therefore, aim to apply pressure on Taipei while minimizing the potential for a US response,” Sharman added.

While some Chinese officials may see a quarantine or seizure of Taiwan’s islands as a way to undermine Taipei, rally nationalist sentiment at home, and give their troops valuable experience, Beijing may hold off if it believes the backlash will outweigh the gains or that such a move would stiffen Taiwan’s resistance. Either way, while Beijing, Taipei, and Washington all have an interest in avoiding a crisis, that won’t keep China from continuing its “constant nibbling and chipping away at the status quo,” Lauren Dickey, who was acting director for Taiwan policy at the US Defense Department until earlier this year, said on a CSIS podcast in May.

Dickey said China’s “presence activities” around Taiwan and its outlying islands have “a growing risk” of leading to an accident or a similar event, which Beijing could try to exploit to pressure Taiwan further. Over the months ahead, Dickey said, “I’m going to be watching just to see what the activities at the outlying islands continue to include — for instance, something that could culminate in a strategic gain for the PRC.”