China’s Maritime Gamble: A Departure From Gray-Zone Coercion in East Asia
Surges in military aggression near Taiwan since President Lai Ching-te’s inauguration last month are defining a provocative new Chinese military posture. At the same time, violent skirmishes with the Philippines are breaking out in the South China Sea, around Second Thomas Shoal. Beijing’s new commitment to escalation is a marked departure from its signature gray-zone activities, which now raises unprecedented issues for Washington.
Namely, how does Beijing’s new behavior in these two spaces fit into its broader strategic ambitions? And, more importantly, what happens next?
The most recent Chinese military demonstration followed the inaugural speech by Taiwan’s newly elected president on May 20. Lai has been vilified in Beijing and, as such, China didn’t miss the opportunity to express dissatisfaction with a show of force.
For a few days, China’s military presence in the Taiwan Strait remained relatively normal. That changed on May 24, when China began a series of military drills surrounding Taiwan called Joint Sword-2024A.
The drills produced this year’s highest recorded activity of People’s Liberation Army Air Force aircraft near Taiwan. Of the 62 aircraft detected, 47 crossed the median line in the Taiwan Strait—an even more provocative action.
China’s People’s Liberation Army Navy activity also peaked on May 25, with 27 ships active around Taiwan. That’s the highest single-day PLAN activity since recordkeeping began in November 2020—even exceeding the naval response to then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s Taiwan trip in 2022. It also represented an almost 400% increase over the 30-day average.
Furthermore, the three-day delay before Joint Sword began was instructive. Looking at past events triggering a military reaction from Beijing, a pattern emerges. Even when Beijing is caught off-guard, as it seems it was with Lai’s speech, it can respond and sustain an elevated military presence around Taiwan within several days.
By May 25, Chinese military activity began winding down, only to spike again in response to a U.S. delegation to Taiwan on May 26 led by the House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Texas.
The visit shouldn’t have been a surprise to Beijing, but it took about four days to see the expected Chinese military reaction. On May 30, the PLAAF dispatched 38 aircraft around Taiwan, with 28 crossing the median line.
Between June 21 and 27, another surge in activity was witnessed. The highest day saw 41 Chinese aircraft active around Taiwan, with 31 crossing the strait’s median line. That corresponded to a 10-day average of more than 17 median-line crossings, a figure not seen since August 2022.
The surge seemingly coincided with clashes at Second Thomas Shoal, but also aligns with increased military training and exercises typically seen in the summer.
Additionally, in a stark departure from the past, PLAAF aircraft have crossed the median line almost 70% of the days this year. The consistency has helped normalize this aggressive posture. Before September 2020, the PLA had only crossed the median line of the Taiwan Strait four times since the demarcation was established in 1954.
Now, each military escalation is perceived as less threatening since the baseline of what is considered ‘normal activity’ has gradually changed—a mindset that complicates predictive and timely action. When military escalations are normalized, one’s threat calculus also adjusts, but it does so to the advantage of the aggressor, giving less time for the defender to react.
This troubling trend is broader and involves more than aircraft and warships. On June 18, a Chinese nuclear-armed submarine surfaced in the Taiwan Strait, a possible Jin-class ballistic missile submarine based on Hainan Island. That was only the fourth time a submarine was spotted in the strait since 2019.
Moreover, China Coast Guard officials illegally boarded a Taiwanese tourist boat in an act of intimidation near Taiwan’s Kinmen Island—another departure from past behavior this year. Prior to that, China always maintained respect for Taiwan’s control of the waters around Kinmen. It follows the introduction of a 2021 CCG law that authorizes deadly force and a new regulation allowing foreigners to be apprehended in China’s declared waters.
This leads us to consider developments in the South China Sea—another area that is becoming increasingly central to China’s regional priorities.
After decades of concerted efforts, the South China Sea is increasingly resembling a Chinese lake. In the past decade, the PLA has developed several artificial islands that sustain naval and paramilitary presence at numerous contested features far from China.
That has occurred despite assurances in 2015 by Chinese leader Xi Jinping to then-President Barack Obama that China had “no intention to militarize” the artificial islands. Those artificial islands have since sustained the increasingly provocative use of PLAN, CCG, and maritime militia in the South China Sea.
Beijing has also strategically imposed fishing bans to reportedly better leverage its repurposed fishing fleets as a maritime militia. All of this has resulted in the increasing frequency of confrontations, injuries, and damage to other nations’ maritime forces.
That’s unsustainable, as escalations can quickly unfold into more serious conflicts. President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. of the Philippines has already warned that if a Filipino is killed, it will be understood as an act of war: “Almost certainly, it’s going to be a redline.”