On July 20, a Philippine vessel clashed with Chinese coast guard forces near Second Thomas Shoal — the same day the ASEAN foreign ministers' meeting opened in Manila, and US Secretary of State Marco Rubio sat down with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi to discuss Taiwan, the South China Sea, and regional security.
Three days later, Chinese coast guard ships drove Philippine government vessels from waters near Scarborough Shoal using water cannons.
On the negotiating floor in Manila, Beijing projected stability. On the water, it kept pressing. This combination is not contradictory. It is the strategy.
South China Sea as Beijing's Gray Zone Laboratory
Beijing has spent years refining a multilayer approach along the First Island Chain. The PLA provides military deterrence in the background. The coast guard handles the operational front: patrols, interceptions, physical blocking, and inspections. Maritime militia units move in coordination. Official legal language and state media frame the whole operation as routine "lawful jurisdiction."
The result is that Beijing converts what would otherwise register as military pressure into a bureaucratic enforcement presence. It shifts the balance of maritime order without the diplomatic costs of direct military confrontation.
Coast guard ships are harder to characterize as acts of aggression than warships. They occupy a legal gray zone that most international frameworks were not designed to adjudicate cleanly. They carry more coercive capacity than civilian vessels, but far less diplomatic liability than naval ones — making them close to ideal for incremental pressure.
From Second Thomas Shoal to Scarborough Shoal, the pattern has been consistent: coast guard vessels appear not as a one-time show of force, but as a permanent feature of the contested environment. They intercept resupply runs. They document every encounter in ways that allow Beijing to narrate the interaction as the exercise of administrative authority. One side is trying to maintain a physical presence; the other is trying to make that presence legally invisible.
This dynamic ran on full display even during the ASEAN ministerial. China and the Philippines exchanged official protests at the diplomatic level while neither side sought outright escalation. Beijing maintained a de-escalation posture in Manila while coast guard operations at sea continued uninterrupted. The two tracks run in parallel. That is the point.
263 Vessels and Counting — Taiwan Is Already the Next Theater
The same playbook is now running in the Taiwan Strait. Its origins there trace to February 2024, when a mainland Chinese speedboat capsized near Kinmen under disputed circumstances. Beijing used the incident to formally reject Taiwan's long-standing restricted waters boundary, and immediately established regular coast guard patrols around Kinmen as a permanent feature of the maritime environment.
Two years later, those patrols have expanded substantially.
Taiwan's Coast Guard Administration recorded 263 sightings of Chinese government vessels — coast guard ships, rescue vessels, and survey ships — in waters around Taiwan and its outlying islands in June 2026 alone, according to AFP. That figure was up from 200 in May, and well above the 171 recorded in June 2025. The count does not include PLA warships.
Coast Guard Administration officials noted that the increase is visible in both the number of vessels and the diversity of vessel types participating in gray zone operations. This is not the pattern of military exercises, which deliver concentrated shock in a short window.
What is taking place is structurally different: a sustained, incremental campaign aimed at eroding Taiwan's practical control over the waters around its own territory. The geographic scope has also grown. Chinese coast guard activity is no longer concentrated around the outlying islands of Kinmen and Matsu. It is now extending toward Taiwan's main island.
Beijing Takes Its Blockade Template to Taiwan's East Coast
In July, Reuters reported that Chinese coast guard ships had been observed operating in Taiwan's eastern waters. Historically, coast guard vessels appearing on Taiwan's Pacific-facing east coast did so in conjunction with PLA circumnavigation exercises — a component of a scripted military display.
What Reuters documented was different: independent coast guard patrols framed as "rights protection law enforcement" operations, conducted without the surrounding structure of a formal military exercise.
The implication is significant. Beijing is attempting to take pressure tactics that were developed and tested during large-scale military exercises, and install them as routine day-to-day operations. A blockade posture, rehearsed under exercise conditions, is being normalized into ongoing law enforcement activity.
Taiwan's Coast Guard Administration has described China's current approach as multi-point, multi-format, and cross-regional — pressing at different geographic locations simultaneously, in different forms, without a single concentrated point of confrontation. The administration has maintained that Beijing holds no jurisdictional authority in Taiwan's surrounding waters. That position is supported internationally: the United States, United Kingdom, France, and Germany have each expressed concern about the pattern. But diplomatic concern, however well-coordinated, does not by itself constitute sustained operational presence.
Only Sustained Patrols Can Halt Beijing's Jurisdictional Creep
On July 9, Taiwan's government arranged a Kinmen patrol visit for seven foreign legislators and two Taiwanese lawmakers aboard Coast Guard Administration vessels. The move served two purposes at once: it demonstrated Taiwan's active law enforcement capacity in contested waters, and it gave international observers a firsthand view of the gray zone pressure being applied at the front line.
That kind of integrated response — operationally visible, diplomatically connected, internationally witnessed — points toward what an effective counter-strategy looks like. Against Beijing's effort to normalize coast guard patrols as routine jurisdiction, Taiwan's response has to be equally routine: sustained patrols, consistent refusal of illegal inspections, and deepened cooperation with partner nations who have a stake in maritime order.
The Ma Ying-jeou administration, whatever its other controversies, understood this dynamic in the context of the Diaoyu Islands and South China Sea disputes. Beyond issuing diplomatic statements, it coordinated coast guard escorts for fishing vessels, conducted naval patrols, and stationed personnel on Itu Aba Island (太平島). Ma himself traveled to the island before leaving office to reaffirm the Republic of China's sovereignty claim in person. Sustained physical presence was treated as part of the sovereignty toolkit — not a supplement to it.
Today, with Chinese coast guard activity extending from Kinmen to Taiwan's eastern approaches, the same logic applies with far greater urgency. Coast guard law enforcement, naval backing, and international cooperation need to be integrated into a continuous and publicly visible response — not a reactive one triggered after the fact.
The Water Does Not Care About the Statement
The First Island Chain was once discussed primarily in terms of naval deployments, missile ranges, and wartime blockade scenarios. Beijing has expanded the competition into jurisdictional enforcement, legal framing, and the daily management of maritime space.
The argument Beijing is advancing — through patrols, interceptions, and the sheer accumulation of operational presence — is that its coast guard is exercising normal administrative authority over these waters. From Second Thomas Shoal and Scarborough Shoal to Kinmen and the waters east of Taiwan, the same gray zone logic is advancing progressively along the entire length of the First Island Chain.
The risk for Taiwan is not a sudden military confrontation. It is the slower process by which international observers come to regard Chinese coast guard operations as the new normal.
Sovereignty expressed only through diplomatic protests and legal documents — without the corresponding operational reality of effective maritime management — is sovereignty that erodes over time. The water does not care about the statement.
*The author holds a Ph.D. in Philosophy from the University of British Columbia, Canada, and is an associate professor accredited by Taiwan's Ministry of Education, as well as a psychiatrist.
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