US Naval War College study says Chinese small-boat landings keep hitting Taiwan's invasion beaches

A study released on 3 November by the China Maritime Studies Institute at the US Naval War College says that a string of small-boat landings by Chinese men on Taiwan's coast has come ashore at places of high military value, and that reconnaissance by the People's Liberation Army cannot be ruled out. The paper, CMSI Note 26, was written by Ian Easton, an associate professor at the institute.

According to the study, cross-strait small-boat landings appear to have begun in 2021, and at least eight Chinese men have been arrested in Taiwan in connection with them. Every reported landing took place at a sensitive location. Most were on beaches that defence planners already regard as likely invasion sites, and the rest were at ports and river mouths that the author says are of high interest to PLA war planners.

The paper also notes a gap in the pattern. None of the reported landings happened near Hsinchu, which it describes as the most likely place for an ordinary civilian to land a small boat, because it is the closest point to China and has a suitable port and long beaches.

The Bali beach case

The most recent case cited is the landing of two Chinese men, surnamed Luan and Yu, who reached the north breakwater of the Port of Taipei in New Taipei's Bali District in a rubber boat with an outboard motor in the early hours of 23 July. Prosecutors in Shilin said in September that the pair had driven from Qingdao in Shandong to the Fujian coast, set out from near Fuzhou on 22 July, and then travelled through several cities in Taiwan before the Coast Guard Administration arrested them on 30 July. They were indicted for illegal entry, with prosecutors seeking two years in prison for each.

Taiwan News reported that the study also lists two unresolved cases in which abandoned Chinese motorboats were found but no one was caught: one on Daan beach north of the Port of Taichung in August 2021, and one near a coastal radar site at the mouth of the Zengwen River in Tainan in March 2026. That leaves open the possibility that some people landed and were never found.

Doctrine and timing

The study says PLA textbooks describe sending undercover operatives into Taiwan to gather intelligence and carry out special missions before an attack, including special forces sent deep inland to collect information that satellites and aircraft cannot. It adds that Taiwanese security officials have linked the timing of the landings to Taiwan's annual war games and military exercises. Taiwan News reported that National Security Bureau Director-General Tsai Ming-yen told legislators in April that the incidents seemed to coincide with Chinese drills and could be a way of probing coastal defences.

The author cautions that the landings have many possible explanations, including smuggling, espionage and human trafficking, and that no public evidence ties any of the arrested men to the PLA. Some of them told investigators they had been fishing, wanted to defect or had personal reasons for the crossing.

What the study recommends

The paper argues that closer US cooperation with Taiwan's armed forces on military engineering, counter-infiltration and coastal defence would help, along with closing vulnerable stretches of coast to the public, setting up communities of coast watchers and fortifying coastal garrisons in peacetime. Taiwan News reported that it also points to staff shortages and budget limits in the coast guard.

Taiwan's navy has separately been working on the same beaches. The Taipei Times reported in October that the defence ministry plans to hire civilian survey boats and aircraft to map likely landing beaches, including Wazihwei in Bali District, to help plan mines and obstacles.

Why it matters

If untrained men in rubber boats can reach invasion beaches and travel inland for days, the same gaps could help trained infiltrators before a conflict. Whatever the motives in each case, the study puts the pattern of landing sites, rather than individual stories, at the centre of the debate over Taiwan's coastal security.