At 12:01 p.m. on July 6, a People's Liberation Army Navy nuclear-powered submarine fired a submarine-launched ballistic missile carrying a simulated warhead into the South Pacific — one day before the 89th anniversary of the 1937 Marco Polo Bridge Incident, the clash that opened Japan's full-scale invasion of China. The launch capped a week in which Chinese coast guard ships, fighter jets, bombers and a joint naval exercise with Russia converged on the waters around Taiwan and the western Pacific in what amounts to a coordinated, multi-domain show of force.
Beijing's official account, carried by state broadcaster CCTV, described the test as a routine annual training event conducted after advance notice to affected countries and consistent with international law. Governments and foreign media confirmed that Japan, Australia, New Zealand and Papua New Guinea were among the countries notified in advance. Taken on its own, that explanation is plausible. Set against everything else China did in the same seven-day window, it looks like one piece of a larger pattern.
A Coast Guard Rotation Settles Into a Routine
On July 4, China's Coast Guard sent two vessels — the 3,000-ton cutter Xiushan (CCG 2305), operated by the East Sea Branch out of Shanghai, and the 5,196-ton Chongming (CCG 1401), a North Sea Branch vessel built on an ocean rescue hull — into waters east of Taiwan. Beijing described the deployment as "routine law enforcement patrols" and said the Xiushan flotilla was relieving an earlier Daishan flotilla that had patrolled the same waters since June 1. Taiwan's Coast Guard Administration tracked the two ships roughly 54 nautical miles off Hualien and shadowed them with its own vessels, the Bali and the Hualien.
The pairing matters. The Xiushan is built to the same hull as a People's Liberation Army Navy frigate and carries a 76mm main gun alongside smaller-caliber weapons — informally known as a "coast guard Type 054." The Chongming, by contrast, is a long-range salvage and rescue ship capable of towing and extended patrols. Combining an armed patrol vessel with an ocean-going rescue ship gives Beijing a formation that can sustain a presence far from home port. That two-vessel model, plus the fact that a second rotation followed the first by roughly a month, suggests China intends to keep ships in these waters on a continuing basis — mirroring the patrol rhythm it has used for years around the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands. Notably, the July deployment also marked the first time a North Sea Branch vessel joined the rotation, alongside the East Sea Branch cutters that had operated alone in June, signaling a broader organizational commitment to the mission.
Air Sorties Traced a Path Toward Green Island
Two days before the coast guard ships arrived, Taiwan's Ministry of National Defense reported that 22 Chinese aircraft — including J-16 fighters, H-6 bombers, KJ-500 airborne early warning planes and drones — flew missions in airspace north, central, southwest and east of Taiwan on July 2, with 20 crossing the median line or its extensions. A flight-track diagram the ministry released the following day showed five of those aircraft threading from Taiwan's southwestern air defense identification zone along its southern edge, then turning northeast toward airspace east of Green Island before returning — a route that closely tracks the exclusion zone Beijing declared during the 2024 "Joint Sword" exercise.
The routing is unlikely to be coincidental. It placed Chinese aircraft near the same waters, east of Taiwan, that the coast guard ships would occupy two days later — and that Japan and the Philippines had identified in a May 28 joint announcement on maritime boundary delimitation in that same general area. Read together, the air sorties look less like a stand-alone show against Taiwan and more like advance cover for the coast guard's arrival, timed to answer the Japan-Philippines announcement directly.
Combat Patrols and Long-Range Flights Now Overlap by Design
Some Taiwanese outlets described the July 2 mission as the first time the military had disclosed the People's Liberation Army running a "joint combat readiness patrol" and a "far-sea long-range flight" simultaneously. That framing overstates the novelty. The two labels describe the same combined-arms operation from different angles: "far-sea long-range flight" refers to the aircraft involved, while "joint combat readiness patrol" is the broader term covering both the air and naval elements together. What has genuinely changed is tempo. As recently as late 2025, the Eastern Theater Command tended to run these elements a day apart — a naval sortie one day, an air sortie the next. The first confirmed same-day combination came on February 11, 2026, when Taiwan's defense ministry reported eleven aircraft, including J-16s, H-6Ks and refueling tankers, operating simultaneously in the southwest, east and western Pacific under a single mission label. Because Chinese warships are now more or less permanently stationed around Taiwan, the older sequencing — ships deploying first, aircraft following — is no longer necessary. The compression from two days to one reflects a real shift in operational tempo, even if it has gone largely unexplained in Taiwan's public commentary.
A Symbolic Date for a Strategic Signal
The July 6 missile test is the piece that carries the clearest political weight. Japan's Maritime Safety Agency issued a navigational warning covering roughly 8,990 square kilometers of ocean southeast of Miyazaki Prefecture on Kyushu, consistent with a debris hazard zone. Separately, Fudan University professor Shen Yi estimated the missile's flight path at roughly 8,602 kilometers, with impact near Fiji. Chinese authorities also declared two rocket-debris exclusion zones off Dalian and Lüshun in the northern Yellow Sea in the days surrounding the launch — evidence consistent with an underwater launch from that area. Cross-referencing those exclusion zones, the notified countries and the reported South Pacific impact point against a decade of prior Chinese submarine-launched ballistic missile tests points to this being a JL-3 intercontinental-range missile — apparently the first such test launched from the northern Yellow Sea toward waters east of the Solomon Islands.
The date is the message. Firing a strategic missile on the eve of the anniversary that marks the start of Japan's invasion of China lands differently than an ordinary training notice would. The timing is sharpened by coincidence: Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese was in Suva at the moment of the launch, signing a new defense pact with Fijian Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka. Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong said the test undermined regional stability, and Japanese government spokesman Minoru Kihara said Tokyo viewed the launch with concern.
Moscow Joins the Show of Force in the Yellow Sea
The same week also brought a Chinese-Russian naval exercise, "Joint Sea-2026," running from July 6 to 13 off Qingdao. Japan's Joint Staff Office reported Russian vessels — a Slava-class cruiser, a Kilo-class submarine, a submarine rescue ship and a supply vessel — transiting the Tsushima Strait into the East China Sea in the days beforehand; Russia confirmed on July 5 that the flotilla, including the cruiser Varyag and the submarine Ufa, had reached Qingdao. China's contingent includes destroyers and frigates from its Northern Theater Command. Notably, reports indicate Beijing plans to contribute a Yuan-class submarine this year, a change from the Kilo-class boat it fielded in 2025. Once the drill concludes, the two navies are expected to form a combined task group for a joint patrol into the Pacific — the seventh such joint patrol in a now-annual pattern.
What Taipei's Vessel Count Leaves Out
Twice in five weeks — on June 1 and again on July 4 — Taiwan's National Security Council Secretary-General Joseph Wu posted diagrams on social media showing Chinese naval and coast guard deployments along the First Island Chain, citing a tracked total exceeding 110 vessels as evidence of what he called expansionism. The vessel count is accurate as far as it goes, but it tells only half the story. Most Chinese naval and coast guard activity in these waters responds directly to exercises and patrols by the United States, Japan and the Philippines in the same seas. Presenting Chinese deployments without the corresponding allied force posture strips out the context international readers — and Taiwan's own public — need to judge how much of this activity is initiative and how much is response.
Viewed individually, the coast guard rotation, the air sorties, the missile test and the Sino-Russian exercise could each be dismissed as routine. Viewed together, over a single week bracketing a historically loaded anniversary, they read as a coordinated campaign — one aimed as much at Japan, the Philippines, Australia and the United States as at Taiwan itself.
*The author is a research fellow at the Chinese Strategic Association. （Related： Opinion | The Warships Nobody Noticed Behind China-Russia's Air Patrol ｜ Latest ）
