When Japan and the Philippines quietly announced plans to draw a maritime boundary in waters east of Taiwan, China did not file a diplomatic protest. It sent warships.
Within days of the May 28 announcement — made during Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr.'s summit with Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi in Tokyo — Chinese coast guard vessels were patrolling waters off Taiwan's eastern coastline, declaring the Japan-Philippines talks illegal and warning that Beijing "will not allow" any outcome that excludes China. A follow-up special maritime enforcement operation was launched on June 6, involving agencies from Fujian and Guangdong provinces alongside the East China Sea Navigation Support Center.
The rapid escalation has put Taiwan in an uncomfortable position: sidelined from negotiations over waters where it holds active maritime rights claims, while China uses the same dispute to assert a physical presence it has long sought to normalize east of the island.
How Taiwan Got Caught Flat-Footed
Taiwan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs did not handle the announcement cleanly. Its initial statement welcomed the Japan-Philippines "Comprehensive Strategic Partnership" in positive terms — only to walk back that language days later, urging both Tokyo and Manila to take full account of the "high degree of overlap" between the proposed delimitation zone and Taiwan's own EEZ.
The KMT, Taiwan's main opposition party, described the ministry's statement as "humiliating" and warned that failure to seek participation in the overlapping EEZ talks could seriously hurt Taiwanese fishermen's livelihoods.
MOFA spokesman Hsiao Kuang-wei pushed back against the criticism, saying Taiwan believes both Japan and the Philippines have no intention of infringing on Taiwan's rights, and that no details on the proposed EEZ boundaries have been released so far. He added that representative offices in Tokyo and Manila had been instructed to gather more information.
Tokyo offered some reassurance. Japanese Chief Cabinet Secretary Kihara Minoru said any Japan-Philippines maritime boundary agreement would not be legally binding on other parties. But critics argued that was cold comfort — a bilateral agreement that proceeds without Taiwan's participation could still define the legal landscape in ways that are difficult to reverse.
Beijing Moves From Words to Water
China's response went well beyond rhetoric. China's coast guard said a flotilla had carried out patrols east of Taiwan, describing the deployment as "a necessary action taken in response to Japan and the Philippines unilaterally announcing the initiation of maritime boundary delimitation negotiations in the waters east of China's Taiwan island."
On June 6, China's Ministry of Transport, together with the Maritime Safety Administrations of Fujian and Guangdong provinces, launched a special operation aimed at enforcing administrative control over the maritime area, strengthening patrols in deep-water zones, and protecting what Beijing describes as its national rights and interests.
Taiwan's coast guard responded by deploying vessels to monitor the situation. The Taiwanese coast guard shadowed and monitored two Chinese vessels spotted around 51 to 52 nautical miles southeast of Orchid Island, which sits roughly 64 kilometers off the southeastern coast of the main island.
What's Actually at Stake for Taiwan
Former Taiwanese representative to New Zealand Chieh Wen-chi, appearing on political talk program CTi Hot Evening News, offered the sharpest domestic critique. He argued that urging both countries to "take into consideration" Taiwan's interests amounted to a capitulation, and that the ministry should instead have filed a formal protest and declared Taiwan would not recognize any delimitation outcome infringing on its rights.
Chieh drew a distinction that cut to the heart of the issue: the waters under negotiation are not the long-contested Diaoyutai Islands, but the open sea directly off Taiwan's eastern coast. The practical consequences, he warned, are immediate — Taiwan's fishing communities operating in those waters could lose access, and in a worst-case scenario, Philippine coast guard vessels could eventually be patrolling off Hualien. He called on the Control Yuan, Taiwan's independent government oversight body, to investigate what he described as a serious dereliction of duty by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. （Related： Opinion | China Encircles Taiwan After Japan and Philippines Draw a Maritime Border ｜ Latest ）
