Rough seas China’s expanding grey-zone campaign around Taiwan

On June 6, China announced the launch of a special maritime operation east of Taiwan. Officially, the deployment was organised by China's Ministry of Transport under the title “Special maritime traffic law-enforcement operation.”

According to the state news agency Xinhua, the main objective of the campaign is to establish maritime administrative jurisdiction — in practice, civil and law-enforcement control over shipping routes to protect China’s national interests.

The latest escalation was triggered by talks between Japan and the Philippines on the delimitation of maritime borders in the waters east of Taiwan. The issue is that the proposed boundary zones overlap with an exclusive economic zone claimed by mainland China. Beijing stated that the actions of Tokyo and Manila “seriously violate China's territorial sovereignty, as well as its maritime rights and interests.”

China is predictably interpreting the agreement between Japan and the Philippines primarily through the lens of the U.S. strategy in the Asia-Pacific region. For Beijing, it appears to be an attempt by the United States and its allies to increase pressure along China’s own coastline and strengthen a regional anti-China security framework under the concept of the “first island chain” — a system of allied territories and bases designed to limit the Chinese navy’s access to the wider Pacific. At the same time, the actions of these allies may also serve other purposes — for example, diverting Beijing’s attention from the U.S.–Iran confrontation or testing China’s responses in order to fine-tune their own tactics in this sensitive region of the world.

However, Beijing is not so simple as to act purely reactively. The Chinese side has been developing for several years a model of pressure on Taiwan without formally initiating a war, and now this strategy has reached a new level. China has significantly increased patrols east of Taiwan, intensified coast guard activity, and expanded control over shipping in an area that has long been considered relatively calm. Formally, this is framed as protecting jurisdiction and the safety of maritime routes. In practice, however, the PRC is gradually altering the status quo around the island, turning disputed waters into an area of continuous Chinese presence.

The key feature of this campaign is the absence of abrupt moves. Beijing avoids direct military escalation and operates in what is known as the “grey zone.” Instead of warships, the focus is on coast guard vessels, inspections of civilian ships, demonstrative patrols, and sustained pressure on Taiwan’s maritime communications. This approach allows China to simultaneously strengthen its control over the region while avoiding a formal pretext for an immediate military response from the United States.

The current manoeuvres differ noticeably from previous Chinese activities around Taiwan. Earlier, Chinese operations were concentrated in the Taiwan Strait, which separates the island from mainland China. Now, however, the operation has shifted east of Taiwan — into the Philippine Sea, an area that the self-governing island has traditionally regarded as a relatively secure rear zone.

Also notable is the composition of the deployed forces. China has, for the first time, sent a full-scale interagency group of large civilian vessels into this area. Among them are the flagship Haixun 09, with a displacement of 10,000 tons, the research vessel Haixun 08, and ocean-going rescue ships. Vessels of this class were previously rarely used in operations in the open Pacific.

Although Beijing’s actions are political and diplomatic in nature, Western analysts tend to view them as a de facto test of elements of a limited maritime blockade of Taiwan. Increasingly, they speak of a scenario of the island being “slowly choked” through control over logistics and supply routes rather than a traditional amphibious invasion. The economic factor is of key importance here. Taiwan is critically dependent on external trade, fuel imports, and the stable functioning of maritime routes. Even limited disruptions could quickly affect global markets and technological supply chains. For China, according to some commentators, manoeuvres off Taiwan’s eastern coast could gradually evolve into a powerful instrument of pressure: in such a context, a large-scale military conflict no longer appears to be the only way to shift the balance of power around the island.

Against this backdrop, Washington is trying to avoid overly sharp statements, although the U.S. military is closely monitoring developments. In the United States, there is an understanding that Beijing’s strategy is designed precisely to gradually accustom the world to a new reality. Each individual operation appears insufficiently large-scale to justify a forceful response, yet collectively these actions are changing the situation around Taiwan far more rapidly than diplomatic negotiations. For the region, this means one thing: tensions around the island are gradually ceasing to be a series of discrete crises and are instead becoming a permanent background condition of global politics.