China’s maintained a persistent presence in the Bashi Channel and waters east of Taiwan for weeks before the announcement of maritime delimitation talks between Japan and the Philippines, according to a geospatial intelligence (GEOINT) analyst based in the United States.
The assessment, published by GEOINT analyst Jason Wang on LinkedIn, said China has maintained a continuous presence east of Taiwan since May, thereby challenging the perception that Beijing’s recent activities east of Taiwan were solely triggered by Japan and the Philippines’ announcement to begin negotiations on maritime delimitation.
Instead, it suggests that China’s sustained presence in the region had been underway for weeks before the talks were announced, underscoring what appears to be a longer-term effort by Beijing to expand its operational footprint in the strategic waters linking the South China Sea and the Pacific Ocean.
Mr. Jason, who is the COO of a geospatial intelligence platform, IngeniSpace, shared a geospatial image depicting the movements of unspecified Chinese vessels, and said that the deployments were concentrated over key submarine cable transit areas in the Bashi Channel and waters east of Taiwan.
He argued that by pre-emptively establishing a presence in this area of interest, China could frame any move by Japan, the Philippines and the United States as escalatory, to justify the expansion of its own operations.
According to Mr. Jason, this is an example of China’s ‘salami-slicing’ strategy – incrementally altering the status quo through a series of small, cumulative steps – aimed at gradually extending the scope of Beijing’s grey-zone activities.
“You are witnessing salami slicing that has resulted in China’s Irregular Warfare evolving beyond the First Island Chain,” he said in his LinkedIn Post on June 30th.
In the image shared by Mr. Jason, the activity of unspecified vessels, which he claims are Chinese, appears concentrated over key undersea cable routes, even though the type, mission, and affiliation of the vessels depicted were not specified.
Per the open-source mapping of undersea cables referred to by the Author, several major systems traverse or approach this area, including the China-U.S. Cable Network (CHUS), APCN-2, Asia Pacific Gateway (APG), EAC-C2C, and segments of the broader SEA-ME-WE family of cables.
From a risk perspective, the CHUS system is often viewed as strategically sensitive due to its direct trans-Pacific link between China and the United States, while APCN-2 and APG are considered critical regional backbones connecting Taiwan, Japan, South Korea, and Southeast Asia. EAC-C2C and related systems add redundancy but also increase the density of infrastructure in the same maritime space, amplifying cumulative exposure.
China’s grey-zone tactics against Taiwan already prominently feature submarine cable sabotage, often carried out by so-called shadow fleet vessels using anchor-dragging techniques discussed in extensive detail by Unraavelling Geopolitics here.
Given the recent escalation of Chinese grey-zone activities, including repeated maritime incursions in waters under Taiwan’s jurisdiction, coercive manoeuvres in the South China Sea against the Philippine vessels, as well as deterioration of China’s relations with Japan, submarine cables linking Taiwan, the Philippines and Japan should be considered as facing heightened risks of grey-zone sabotage by China.
Accordingly, the APCN-2, the Asia Pacific Gateway (APG) and the EAC-C2C stand out as prime potential targets among the aforementioned systems, due to their direct connections across these three locations.
Overall, though, the Bashi Channel and the Luzon Strait host several submarine cable systems carrying data between Taiwan, the Philippines, Japan, Southeast Asia, and trans-Pacific routes to the United States, thereby forming a structural vulnerability for East Asian digital connectivity in scenarios involving sustained maritime grey-zone activities by China against Taiwan and the Philippines.
Therefore, experts have suggested that regional and extra-regional stakeholders in the East Asian region take collective measures to mitigate the risks posed by potential submarine cable disruptions.
The measures could include stronger regional coordination on attribution by integrating satellite imagery, vessel-tracking data, maritime patrol records and cable operator information into a common attribution framework to distinguish deliberate sabotage from accidental damage, which will enable an evidence-backed response to coercive grey-zone activities.
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Also, restoration timelines after disruption need to be shortened by expanding access to specialised cable repair vessels, pre-positioning spare components, establishing regional repair hubs and improving coordination among governments, operators and private contractors. This would diminish the coercive utility of deliberate cable disruptions by limiting their operational and economic impact.
Complementing these measures should be investments in layered backup communication networks, including low- and medium-Earth orbit satellite constellations, microwave links, protected terrestrial infrastructure and mobile emergency communication systems to preserve essential communications during submarine cable outages.
Tanmay Kadam is a geopolitical observer based in India. He has experience working as a Defence and International Affairs journalist for EurAsian Times. He can be contacted at tanmaykadam700@gmail.com.