China’s ‘Law Enforcement’ Patrols Around Taiwan Seek to Quietly Change the Strategic Balance in the First Island Chain

China’s latest maritime operations east of Taiwan, which Beijing linked to Japan-Philippines delimitation talks, when viewed alongside its more than two years of regular incursions in waters around Taiwan’s offshore islands, including Kinmen, Matsu and Pratas, point to a broader effort to expand its sustained military presence across strategically important waters of the first island chain.

On June 6th, China’s state-owned Xinhua News Agency reported that the Chinese Ministry of Transport organized a “special maritime traffic law enforcement operation” in waters east of Taiwan in response to what it described as Japan and the Philippines’ “unilateral announcement of launching maritime delimitation talks.”

Tokyo and Manila announced in May that they would start formal talks “to delimit the maritime boundary” of an economic zone and continental shelf between them, while Taipei said on June 3rd that it should be consulted on the talks.

The report did not specify how long the operation lasted or is scheduled to last, but stated that it involved the Fujian Maritime Safety Administration, Guangdong Maritime Safety Administration, East China Sea navigation support center, and East China Sea Rescue Bureau.

It framed the operation as a “necessary measure in response to the Japan-Philippines move, which has seriously infringed upon China’s territorial sovereignty and maritime rights and interests.”

According to Taiwan’s Coast Guard Administration (CGA), four Chinese ships, including three CCG vessels, sailed into Taiwan’s restricted waters 30 nautical miles (55.6km) southwest of Taiwan proper’s southern tip, in response to which the latter dispatched seven of its coast guard vessels.

All four Chinese government vessels were “expelled” from the restricted waters, the CGA said in a statement.

The CGA also published a recording of an unidentified Chinese officer issuing a warning to the Taiwanese ships during this confrontation: “These are waters under Chinese jurisdiction. Our maritime law-enforcement formation is carrying out a special traffic law-enforcement mission in the waters of the Taiwan Strait. Do not interfere with our official duties.”

This warning was met with a response from a Taiwanese coast guard officer that China does not enjoy any “sovereign rights” in the waters east of Taiwan.

“If conflict occurs, your side will face sanctions from the world. Only maritime stability can ensure your country’s development,” the Taiwanese officer further said.

This confrontation followed or coincided with another stand-off near the Pratas (or Dongsha) Atoll on June 5th-6th, wherein a CCG vessel together with a survey vessel conducted an operation in waters near the Pratas islands.

Taiwan’s coast guard said on June 5th that it detected a Chinese coast guard vessel, which then entered the restricted waters around the Pratas Islands after accelerating and making a sharp turn while ignoring warnings from a Taiwanese ship.

According to the Taiwanese coast guard’s statement, “the Chinese coast guard vessel broadcast ​that it was conducting law enforcement operations and that “Taiwan’s future ​lies in ⁠national reunification”, in response to which the Taiwan’s ship broadcast back: “Stop undermining peace. You should return and pursue democracy – that is the ⁠proper way ​to serve your country.”

Also, on June 6th, a Chinese survey vessel had approached the Pratas islands, with the Taiwanese coast guard noting that it was “the first observed instance of Chinese coast guard and survey vessels acting in coordination to provoke Taiwan.”

From a geopolitical risk perspective, the Author considers it important to view these confrontations in conjunction with the regularised incursions by China into restricted waters around Taiwan’s other offshore islands, which do not tend to get as much attention.

The latest such incursion occurred on June 4th, when four CCG vessels entered restricted waters near Taiwan’s Kinmen island. The incursion lasted for about two hours, with Taiwan’s coast guard shadowing the CCG vessels throughout.

This was the 20th reported incursion around Kinmen in 2026, according to Taiwan Security Monitor.

These regularised incursions began in the aftermath of the February 14, 2024 incident, wherein a Chinese fishing boat capsized off the Kinmen archipelago while being chased by the Taiwanese coastguard for having trespassed into Taiwan’s waters. All four crew members of the Chinese fishing boat were thrown into the water, two of whom later died. 

China’s Taiwan Affairs Office accused Taiwan of “violent” behavior toward PRC fishermen and publicly rejected the existence of any “restricted or prohibited waters” in the vicinity of Kinmen, while the China Coast Guard (CCG) announced that it would start undertaking regular patrols and inspections in waters near Kinmen and the Chinese city of Xiamen.

Ever since, China has developed a consistent routine whereby groups of four CCG vessels conduct “law enforcement patrols” in restricted waters three to four times per month, lasting for two hours at a time. A total of 118 incursions were reported between February 2024 and June 4, 2026, comprising 52 incidents in 2024, 46 in 2025, and 20 to date in 2026.

Moreover, the CCG in its incursions in November 2025 adopted east-west converging formations, as opposed to the ‘single-file penetrations’ that are typically employed. So, the single-file formations entail multiple ships advancing in a linear formation, one behind the other, to enter restricted areas, whereas the east-west converging formations involve multiple ships approaching from different directions, roughly from the east and west, coordinating their movements to converge on or encircle the target area.

This represented an escalation in China’s tactics, which basically sought to leverage numerical superiority and larger vessels in coordinated patterns to test Taiwan’s ability to detect, track, and respond to more sophisticated, multi-axis threats.

In the second half of November, the Chinese Coast Guard activity near Taiwan’s offshore islands also coincided with PLA joint air–sea combat readiness patrols, potentially reflecting a scenario in which coast guard vessels establish a cordon around the islands while the PLA forces deter or intercept any reinforcement efforts.

Also, since February 2025, Beijing has extended this strategy of routine incursions to the waters around the Pratas islands with a slight variation, which entailed large flotillas of Chinese fishing vessels entering Taiwan’s restricted zone around Pratas with CCG vessels occasionally accompanying them to interfere with the Taiwanese coast guard’s enforcement operations.

Chinese fishing vessels at times even launched smaller craft that entered the innermost restricted zone, an area comparable to the Pratas Islands’ territorial waters. Between February 2025 and May 28th, 2026, 39 sorties of Chinese coast guard ships were monitored by Taiwan’s coast guard attempting to breach the Pratas restricted zone, with 33 of them in 2025.

So, from a geopolitical risk perspective, the routine incursions by China into Taiwan’s restricted waters around Kinmen and their subsequent extension to Pratas Atoll reflect Beijing’s approach of slowly and gradually building a sustained military presence around the island nation in a manner that impinges on Taiwan’s sovereignty but remains or appears far below the threshold of a conflict, something that the Author has been pointing out since January 2025.

When we consider this approach and view China’s latest confrontations with Taiwan in waters east of the island nation as well as in waters near the Pratas Atoll, which it framed as a response to the Japan-Philippines delimitation announcement, they appear as part of Beijing’s bid to further expand its sustained military presence around Taiwan’s waters.

This is because Taiwan’s position within the first island chain places it at the intersection of the competing geostrategic interests of China, Japan and the Philippines.

The Taiwan-controlled Pratas Atoll, for example, where China has already extended its template of routine incursions, sits at a crucial chokepoint that links the South China Sea with the Taiwan Strait and the Bashi Channel. This allows for their potential militarization, enabling them to serve as a gatekeeper to obstruct movements between the South China Sea and East Asia, thereby making them crucial for the sea-lane security of China, Japan, and the Philippines.

Now, this atoll is located more than 400km (or 250 miles) from Taiwan island and is only lightly defended by Taiwan’s coast guard instead of the armed forces, leading some security experts to consider it susceptible to a Chinese attack. The U.S. Department of Defense’s 2024 China Military Power Report, for example, states that Dongsha is easily capturable for the People’s Liberation Army (PLA).

The PLA, after capturing Pratas, can deploy its long-range surveillance equipment and surface-to-air missiles (SAMs) to effectively close the southern entrance to the Taiwan Strait for the U.S. escort missions or those of its allies such as Japan and the Philippines.

Coming back to China’s routine incursions, it is possible then that Beijing, through its latest law-enforcement operations in the waters east of Taiwan that it linked to the Japan-Philippines maritime delimitation talks, could be seeking to extend its routine coast guard incursions to waters that lie within Taiwan’s eastern exclusive economic zone (EEZ) but have been included in delimitation discussions between Japan and the Philippines.¹

So, China is probably looking to expand its sustained military presence from the waters around Taiwan’s offshore islands to encompass the area up to Taiwan’s eastern exclusive economic zone, which could alter the strategic environment in the First Island Chain.

Tanmay Kadam is a geopolitical observer based in India. He has experience working as a Defense and International Affairs journalist for EurAsian Times. He can be contacted at tanmaykadam700@gmail.com.

References

1. Chieh Chung, Opinion | Beijing’s Maritime Legal War Reaches Taiwan’s Eastern Waters, June 8th, 2026, The Storm Media ↩︎