In just a few weeks, Chinese ships have carried out “law enforcement” operations farther from the mainland than ever before, mapping highly sensitive seabeds and conducting “research” inside a disputed lagoon more than 800 miles from the coast.
China has long been accused of “salami cutting” to advance its territorial claims in the Pacific. It has taken a small step just short of a violent war to assert control over a region whose sovereignty claims under international law are unclear at best and illegal at worst.
Analysts say the move is an attempt to advance its presence beyond the island chain, which Beijing and Washington view as a key line of control in the Western Pacific. They added that this could be of particular concern for Taiwan, an autonomous island that China has vowed to one day “unify” by force if necessary.
The stormy maritime exercises that followed US President Donald Trump’s visit to Beijing were full of goodwill, but Chinese leader Xi Jinping also used it to make one thing clear. This means that the biggest issue that could derail US-China relations is Taiwan.
Earlier this month, three vessels from China’s civilian law enforcement agency, the Maritime Safety Administration (MSA), sailed through the Bashi Strait between the Philippines and Taiwan to begin law enforcement and mapping operations in waters east of Taiwan.
Observers said it was the first time an MSA vessel had been observed east of the First Island Chain, which stretches from southern Japan through Taiwan and the Philippines, along the southern edge of the South China Sea, and from Borneo to Singapore.
Ray Powell, director of the Sealight Project at Stanford University’s Gordian Knot Center for National Security Innovation, highlighted China’s gray zone tactics, which he called the “bashi breakout.”
The Chinese government is “essentially saying we have jurisdiction over this area on the other side of the first island chain, which is very important,” he told CNN.
“This is the first time I’ve seen them doing any kind of sovereignty patrol outside of the nine-dash line, the ten-dash line,” Powell told CNN. The sentence refers to China’s controversial claims to much of the South China Sea, which are hotly contested by neighboring countries and which the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague ruled in 2016 to have no legal basis.
He told CNN that the Chinese government is “trying to create new facts on the surface.”
China’s state-run tabloid Global Times called the MSA ship’s move “a declaration of sovereignty with both legal significance and political signals.”
Much of that signal will be directed toward Taiwan and its 23 million people.
Through Yuyuan Dantian, a semi-official social media account run by China’s state broadcaster, which the Chinese government often uses to leak information to gauge international reaction, the Chinese government announced that for the first time an MSA vessel had mapped the ocean floor east of Taiwan.
This pushes back on foreign claims that China lacks the ability to exercise authority in the maritime domain, the account said in the post.
“The waters east of Taiwan Island constitute our country’s ‘near waters,’ the very waters in which our country maintains a presence and exercises jurisdiction and governance,” the ministry said.
Taiwan President Lai Ching-de said the reason behind MSA’s mission is clear.
“Their (Chinese government’s) real goal is to expand,” he said.
Taiwanese security officials said the Chinese government was using the MSA vessels to create the false impression that it had de facto jurisdiction over Taiwan.
Lai said China continues to “innovate” ways to advance its territorial claims and threaten Taiwan and other Indo-Pacific countries.
“China’s threat to Taiwan knows no limits,” Lai told CNN.
Regarding the waters east of Taiwan, China created part of Salami for the first time in 2023, expanding the so-called nine-dash line, which includes its claims in the South China Sea, to a ten-dash line, with the tenth line east of Taiwan.
The People’s Liberation Army Navy has conducted exercises east of Taiwan in the past, but analysts say they could pose a greater threat to the status quo, as MSA ships and other non-military vessels like them appear to pose less of a threat in the long run.
Essentially, MSA vessels serve as a police force to enforce environmental and maritime regulations.
“I think that’s their immediate goal… to establish themselves as a police force on the seas approaching Taiwan,” Powell said.
The island’s coast guard announced that during a recent voyage, a Chinese MSA vessel made a radio challenge to a commercial vessel heading to Taiwan.
The next step, or “tightening the bore constrictor,” could actually stop these ships before they enter Taiwan or force them into a Chinese port, Powell said.
Targeting ships such as liquid natural gas (LNG) carriers could send an ominous message to Taipei, which relies on imports for almost all of its energy needs, he said.
“We should let Taiwan know that we could starve it when it comes to LNG,” Powell said, calling for gradual progress to a point where Beijing can control Taiwan’s energy imports.
Additionally, the designation of “coastal waters” that emerged in the Yuyuan Dandian report, if done by a formal government body, could mean that China could treat these waters as sovereign territory, experts said.
“Foreign vessels have no right to enter these coastal waters without permission from the sovereign state,” said Karl Schuster, former director of the U.S. Pacific Command Joint Information Center.
Foreign powers with interests in Taiwan are paying attention.
“China’s behavior is extremely destabilizing,” a US State Department spokesperson said in response to reports that Chinese coast guard vessels were harassing commercial ships, according to Reuters.
And in an unusual joint statement from their de facto embassies in Taipei, Britain, France and Germany expressed “concern” over “new Chinese activities in waters east of Taiwan.”
“These actions threaten regional stability, freedom of navigation, and the security of international shipping,” said a statement from the European powers, which, like the United States, do not have formal diplomatic relations with Taiwan.
Schuster said the mapping operation off Taiwan also has military implications.
“This will improve the PLA Navy’s ability to operate submarines and task groups in the area, and it will also give China a very accurate picture of the undersea cables, available resources, and features of the seafloor that China can use to its advantage,” Schuster said.
Analysts said recent talks between Japan and the Philippines over overlapping territorial claims in the exclusive economic zone east of Taiwan may have triggered the MSA mission east of Tawain.
Powell said China has prepared and planned such operations well in advance and is waiting for such a triggering event.
“The Chinese government sensed an opportunity and quickly deemed the negotiations completely illegal and invalid,” he wrote on Seawright’s blog.
Taiwanese security officials expressed similar sentiments.
Over the past decade, China has used multiple strategic windows to engage in expansionist military and gray zone activities in the Yellow Sea, East China Sea, Taiwan Strait, and South China Sea, the report said.
“If we only looked at China’s regional activities through the lens of China-Taiwan tensions, that would be a serious misinterpretation,” the official said, adding that Japan and the Philippines also bear the brunt of Beijing’s regional ambitions.
CNN has reached out to the China MSA for comment.
In the South China Sea, recent research has focused on Scarborough Shoal, an uninhabited reef with a central lagoon located 140 miles (220 kilometers) west of the Philippines’ main island of Luzon and about 530 miles from China’s Hainan province.
Although the feature is located within the Philippine EEZ, it is effectively controlled by China, which has stationed a coast guard near it almost permanently since 2012, according to the Center for Strategic and International Studies’ Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative.
Satellite images recently showed a small floating structure near the entrance to a lagoon, sparking alarm and protests in the Philippines. In 2016, the South China Sea Tribunal held in The Hague ruled that China could not legally occupy the reef.
Later photos showed the structure being towed through the lagoon.
China claimed it was conducting a marine survey before announcing the floating structure had been removed last week. So far, Mr. Powell is inclined to agree with China’s explanation.
But he said it could eventually move to something larger and more permanent.
That’s the concern of Philippine Defense Secretary Gilbert Teodoro, who told the Financial Times last week that China has used the research vessel ploy before, noting that a series of islands and atolls in the South China Sea have been turned into military bases, despite leader Xi Jinping’s promise not to do so during a 2015 White House visit.
“If they… lied before, they lie now,” Teodoro told the FT.
Meanwhile, the US Embassy in Manila announced on Tuesday that it would provide the Philippines with four sea-going drones worth $13 million to help the country “monitor and respond to maritime challenges,” including “gray zone activities and threats to freedom of navigation.”
Powell said protests from Washington and other capitals will not slow down China’s island construction and that Beijing has learned from its experience.
“We can cut a part out of the salami, and that sets the conditions for the next salami. This is an opportunity for them to cut out a small part of it,” he said of eastern Taiwan’s actions.
Powell said the prospect of the MSA or China Coast Guard taking concrete steps to prevent ships from calling at Taiwan, or building new facilities at Scarborough Shoal, “keeps me up at night.”
“My fear is that other people’s reaction will be a shrug,” he says.
And that may mean the last salami has been sliced.
China’s advantage.
