TAIPEI: China deployed a record number of coast guard, scientific research and other ships in Taiwan’s waters last month, the island’s coast guard said, as Beijing dials up pressure on Taipei.
Taiwan’s coast guard warned of an increasingly severe situation, as analysts say the increased activity is part of China’s bid to map the region for submarine warfare.
China’s Communist Party has never ruled Taiwan, but Beijing claims the island democracy is part of its territory and has threatened to use force to annex it. China also asserts jurisdiction over Taiwan’s surrounding waters.
The number of Chinese ships detected around Taiwan’s main island soared to a record 244 in July — an average of nearly eight every day, official data show. That compares with 55 ships detected in June and 30 in May, and 58 in July last year.
In the first 21 days of this month, 152 vessels were detected. About 60 percent are coast guard ships, with research vessels and other government boats making up the rest.
The figures do not include Chinese warships, which China’s military deploys around Taiwan on a near-daily basis. China has long dispatched coast guard and research ships around the Asia-Pacific region, particularly in the hotly contested South China Sea, where Beijing and several littoral countries have competing claims.
China uses the ships to assert authority over the waters, government officials and analysts say, describing them as “grey zone” tactics — actions that fall short of an act of war.
The number of Chinese ships detected around Taiwan and several of its outer islands since May is 1,247, coast guard figures show. “When we say the situation is becoming increasingly severe, we mean that the number of their government vessels in the waters surrounding Taiwan has increased, and there was a marked increase in July,” a senior coast guard official said.
The Communist Party “has never ruled Taiwan for even a single day” and “without sovereignty over land, it has no right to claim economic zones at sea,” the official said.
‘Submarine warfare’
While Taiwan faces the constant threat of a Chinese invasion, China’s increasing maritime presence has also fuelled concerns about a potential quarantine or blockade to prevent ships carrying energy or other critical supplies from entering or leaving its ports.
China operates more than “120 oceanographic research vessels”, the Taiwanese coast guard said previously. It is tracking about 41 that operate in Taiwan’s waters.
They include the “Tong Ji”, which circled Taiwan in May, tracking the edge of the island’s restricted waters and refusing the coast guard’s orders to leave. Its activities likely involved “oceanographic sampling and seabed survey operations”, which could contribute to China’s “anti-submarine warfare databases”, the coast guard said.
That was followed in June by China’s first law enforcement patrol in waters east of Taiwan.
Earlier this month, China also announced “traffic control measures” for the Taiwan Strait as Typhoon Dolphin swept towards the region. A Taiwanese security official recently accused China of “authoritarian expansionism” and warned Beijing was “constantly pushing the limits through an incremental salami-slicing approach”.
Published in Dawn, August 28th, 2026
