China, Taiwan clash over legality of coast guard patrols near island

China and Taiwan clashed over coast guard patrols east of Taiwan after Taipei said Chinese vessels had questioned merchant ships and claimed jurisdiction in waters that both sides treat as strategically sensitive. Beijing cast the operation as lawful maritime enforcement tied to a dispute over regional sea boundaries, while Taiwan said the patrols amounted to pressure disguised as routine policing.

China’s coast guard said the activity was a “special maritime traffic law-enforcement operation” linked to Japan and the Philippines’ decision to begin formal talks on delimiting their maritime boundary, including their exclusive economic zone and continental shelf. Taiwan’s foreign ministry had already asked Japan and the Philippines to respect Taiwan’s rights and territory in those talks, arguing that the area overlaps waters where Taipei says it has rights and interests. Taiwan said it spotted only two Chinese ships to its southeast on June 1 and said they did not enter restricted waters.

The confrontation sharpened as Taiwan said Chinese coast guard vessels asked commercial ships for their point of origin and destination, a move Taipei described as harassment. Taiwan Foreign Minister Lin Chia-lung said Beijing was “using so-called ‘law enforcement’ as a pretext to pursue expansion,” and said China had no right to interfere in the waters east of Taiwan. Taiwan cabinet Secretary-General Xavier Chang said the Chinese communists’ actions endangered sovereignty and violated international law, while reaffirming that Taiwan would not yield “an inch” of its maritime territory.

Taiwan’s Coast Guard Administration said on June 7 that China had no sovereign rights in the waters east of Taiwan and that Beijing’s claims violated international law. A day later, Taiwan defense minister Wellington Koo called the patrols a “provocative act” and said Taiwan’s military would coordinate closely with the coast guard. China’s Taiwan Affairs Office said the patrols were meant to safeguard national sovereignty and maritime rights and interests, and the China Coast Guard promised to keep strengthening control over the area.

The dispute underscores how patrols that look routine on paper can become incremental coercion at sea. The waters east of Taiwan sit near important shipping lanes and the Luzon Strait, and Chinese deployment of six cutters and patrol ships there, along with a renewed standoff near the Taiwan-controlled Pratas Islands more than 400 kilometers from Taiwan island, raises the risk that pressure on civilian shipping could trigger a wider regional crisis.