Taiwan coast guard says China pairs militia boats with coast guard ships to prepare the battlefield

Taiwan's Coast Guard Administration has said China is pairing maritime militia vessels with its coast guard ships to expand what the agency called battlefield preparation around Taiwan and further out into the western Pacific. In a statement to Reuters published on 23 October, the coast guard warned that the activity was also putting pressure on Japan and the Philippines.

The statement answered a Reuters exclusive earlier this month that reported the first known sighting of a Chinese militia boat off Taiwan's Pacific coast in mid-August. The coast guard confirmed the details of that report. It identified the suspected militia fishing boat as the Minfudingyu 07902 and said the vessel came to within about 2.7 nautical miles of the outer edge of Taiwan's restricted waters on 16 August. It said it had sent a patrol boat to drive the vessel away.

According to the earlier reporting, the fishing boat was operating alongside the Chinese coast guard cutter 2502 and the research ship Xiangyanghong 3. The Reuters account drew on a surveillance report by the Taiwanese firm Apex Aviation, which used radar screenshots, infrared imagery and automatic identification system tracking data collected on a reconnaissance flight to document the group of vessels.

The coast guard said it has put the Minfudingyu 07902 on a priority watch list after judging that the boat showed the characteristics of Chinese maritime militia activity, and that it will keep tracking it. China's maritime militia, which dates back to the 1950s, uses fishing vessels with trained, state-supported crews. They often work alongside coast guard ships around flashpoints in the South China Sea, which lets Beijing press its maritime claims while keeping a civilian appearance.

The agency placed the activity in a wider regional picture. It said China had stepped up such operations since June in waters where the exclusive economic zones of Taiwan, Japan and the Philippines overlap, after Tokyo and Manila announced talks on drawing the boundary between their zones. An exclusive economic zone extends 200 nautical miles from a coast and gives the coastal state rights over the natural resources inside it. The coast guard warned that these complex grey-zone operations add to the surveillance and response burden on all three governments, may create pressure on regional security and could affect the existing international maritime order.

The coast guard described the coordinated activity as part of a broader pattern of Chinese grey-zone operations that use law enforcement, scientific research and civilian shipping as cover to extend Beijing's influence at sea while staying below the threshold of open conflict. It said one aim was to assist battlefield preparation. It also noted that the waters off Taiwan's east coast form an important route for maritime traffic and supplies, and said continued Chinese activity there could add to the security pressure on the island. Officials in Taiwan say they believe China is rehearsing for a possible maritime blockade using a mix of military, paramilitary and civilian assets.

China's defence ministry did not immediately respond to Reuters, and neither did the Philippine defence and foreign ministries. Japan's coast guard declined immediate comment. Beijing has previously said its operations off Taiwan's east coast are legitimate and lawful because they take place in what it calls Chinese waters. That is a Chinese claim, and Taiwan's government strongly rejects it. China claims Taiwan as its own territory and has not ruled out the use of force, while the government in Taipei says only Taiwan's people can decide their future.

The first sighting had already drawn a response from Washington. After the original Reuters report, the US State Department described China's activities off Taiwan's east coast as deeply destabilising and urged Beijing to stop pressuring Taiwan. Defence Minister Wellington Koo told lawmakers on 12 October that the military and the coast guard were jointly tracking Chinese militia vessels, that the coast guard would lead in driving them away if they crossed any boundary, and that the navy would provide support under an agreement between the two services.