China Launches Fresh Coast Guard Patrol East of Taiwan, Raising Risk of a Maritime Crisis

China has launched a new coast guard patrol east of Taiwan, replacing an earlier task force whose activities heightened tensions with Taipei and drew criticism from several Western governments. The development could mark the beginning of a more dangerous phase in cross-strait tensions, with civilian shipping increasingly at risk of getting caught in maritime confrontations between China and Taiwan.

A China Coast Guard (CCG) spokesperson, Jiang Lue, said on the morning of July 4^th that the task group led by CCGS Xiushan replaced the task group led by CCGS Daishan to continue law-enforcement patrols in the waters east of China’s Taiwan Island.

“Since June, the Daishan task group had been carrying out patrols, vessel verification, fishery protection, and rescue operations in relevant waters to ensure orderly navigation and activities, and to protect the legitimate and lawful rights and interests, as well as the lives and property of fishermen on both sides of the Strait. The CCG will continue to strengthen law-enforcement patrols in waters under China’s jurisdiction and firmly safeguard China’s territorial sovereignty and maritime rights and interests,” said Jiang.

Responding to Jiang’s remarks, Taiwan’s Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) issued a press release, saying that the People’s Republic of China (PRC) “has no sovereignty or related rights in the waters east of Taiwan, no jurisdiction over these waters, and no law enforcement authority for any PRC vessels. All of the PRC’s so-called ‘law enforcement patrols’ are essentially acts of power expansion that violate international law and undermine regional stability.”

While Taiwan’s coast guard said it was closely tracking two Chinese coast guard vessels and had sent two of its own ships to observe their activities. According to the agency, the Chinese vessels were approximately 54 nautical miles (100 km) east of Hualien as of mid-morning, outside Taiwan’s restricted maritime zone.

The patrol marks China’s second publicly announced coast guard operation in the waters east of Taiwan within a month, highlighting Beijing’s growing reliance on the coast guard to impinge on Taiwan’s sovereignty while remaining below the threshold of a conflict by avoiding deploying the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) Navy.

China has justified these patrols as a response to maritime boundary discussions between Japan and the Philippines concerning their overlapping exclusive economic zones in waters east of Taiwan.

“The mainland coast guard’s law enforcement patrols in the relevant waters are a lawful exercise of jurisdiction, a just act to safeguard national territorial sovereignty and maritime rights and interests, and a necessary action taken against Japan and the Philippines’ unilateral initiation of maritime boundary negotiations in the area, bypassing China and infringing upon China’s maritime rights and interests,” said Zhu Fenglian, spokesperson for China’s Taiwan Affairs Office, during a press conference on July 2^nd.

Zhu also accused Taiwan’s ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) of ignoring what he described as infringements by Japan and the Philippines while failing to protect the interests of people on the island.

“The DPP authorities turn a deaf ear to the infringements of rights by Japan and the Philippines, and turn a blind eye to the damage to the interests of the people on the island. Instead, they take the opportunity to spread the fallacy of ‘Taiwan independence’ and incite ‘anti-China’ sentiment, thus becoming accomplices to external forces that infringe upon the overall interests of the Chinese nation,” said Zhu.

One of the most concerning aspects of China’s latest coast guard activity is that it now carries risk for commercial shipping in waters around Taiwan as well, after CGG vessels in early June repeatedly radioed foreign merchant ships transiting the waters east of Taiwan, requesting information such as their ports of departure and destination while asserting Chinese jurisdiction over the waters.

This escalation in Beijing’s grey zone tactics has prompted concern from multiple Western governments including the United States, Britain, France and Germany, who have diplomatically expressed unease over China’s growing use of coast guard as well as its targeting of commercial traffic, warning that such actions risk undermining regional stability and freedom of navigation.

Now, it is important to note here that this development is broadly consistent with a February 2025 assessment by Unraavelling Geopolitics, which projected that China could pursue such measures in the Taiwan Strait within the following 6–12 months.

While the recent incident occurred roughly four months beyond that timeframe, and in the waters east of Taiwan instead of the Taiwan Strait, the Author did correctly assess the direction of Beijing’s evolving strategy and came reasonably close to estimating when such an escalation would materialise.

At the time, the Author was focused on promoting Unraavelling Geopolitics on Substack, so this assessment was published exclusively on Substack, titled, ‘Understanding Business Risks Amidst Increasing China-Taiwan Tensions’ (Refer to the image below 👇🏻)

Moving on, now the aforesaid escalation from China in its coast guard activities has been met with a strong response from Taiwan, more specifically, the deputy director-general of Taiwan’s Coast Guard Administration (CGA), Hsieh Ching-chin, who said on July 1^st that commercial and civilian vessels should ignore any inspection or boarding requests made by Chinese coast guard ships, and added that the CGA vessels would intervene if necessary.

While addressing the questions from Taiwanese lawmakers, Hsieh said that Taiwanese ships should notify the CGA instead of responding to the boarding inspection by CCG vessels, and “if the situation is urgent, Coast Guard vessels (of Taiwan) will sail between the two ships to separate them”

He further said that if a similar boarding request was made to a foreign-flagged vessel inside Taiwan’s waters, then “in order to defend ‌our national ⁠sovereignty and maintain order in our waters, we will intervene”.

So, now it remains to be seen whether CCG vessels further escalate by trying to board Taiwanese or foreign civilian ships, as Hsieh’s remarks point to the risk of a maritime standoff between Taiwan and China developing into a more dangerous confrontation that could potentially result in casualties.

If this were to occur, and if those were Chinese casualties, then such an incident could trigger additional Chinese coast guard operations with increased frequency, similar to the regularised Chinese maritime incursions in Taiwan’s restricted waters around its Kinmen island, which began in the aftermath of the February 14^th, 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. 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^th, 2026, comprising 52 incidents in 2024, 46 in 2025, and 20 as of June 4^th of this year.

If these regularised CCG patrols in water east of Taiwan continue to entail attempted or successful inspections of civilian ships, then these could risk further clashes with Taiwan’s coast guard vessels, or they could avoid inspections while maintaining an increased frequency to gradually build up to a larger inspection regime that seeks to significantly erode Taiwan’s jurisdiction over its waters.

Such an inspection regime could entail China positioning its coast guard vessels near the approaches to major ports on Taiwan’s eastern and/or western coast, to inspect ships bound for the island.

The coast guard could be backed by China’s maritime militia. While these vessels may look like fishing boats, they have an alternative purpose, which is that of swarming in large numbers around Taiwan to aid in the surveillance of the waters.

China could conduct such law enforcement actions for a few days or extend them over multiple weeks, potentially focusing on one or more ports simultaneously. This allows Beijing to carefully calibrate the degree of pressure it exerts on Taiwan.

Or China can also conduct military drill(s) with participation of its coast guard, especially live-fire exercises like the one it did in August 2022, in response to the then US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan, which forced the airlines to cancel or divert their flights between Southeast and Northeast Asia, and caused a 28% decrease in the number of vessels calling at the Taiwanese Port of Kaohsiung.

Overall, an analysis of radar satellite images of the region carried out by Federico Acosta Rainis, a data specialist at the Pulitzer Center’s Environment Investigations Unit, showed that the number of large ships such as container ships, bulk carriers and tankers, decreased by more than 50% in the international waters of the Strait during this exercise.

Some companies decided to reroute their ships to Taiwan’s east coast to avoid the Strait, which involves three extra sailing days, and others postponed loading their cargoes until the following week to avoid risks, which resulted in delays and increased costs for maritime traffic.

So, China could look to conduct similar military drills or law-enforcement patrols, or a combination of both, for longer durations and more frequently with shorter durations between such consecutive drills. In any case, there could be mild disruptions to the maritime trade passing through the waters around Taiwan.

In geopolitical risk terms, this could hurt Taiwan’s competitiveness as a business destination by creating an impression that Taiwanese supply chains are no longer reliable, prompting multinationals to consider shifting operations to lower-risk countries in the region.

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.