China Launches Taiwan Maritime Operation
The operation was launched Saturday by China's Ministry of Transport in coordination with local authorities, a state news agency reported. Beijing framed the deployment as an assertion of its maritime administrative jurisdiction and a defense of national sovereignty — rooted in its longstanding claim that Taiwan is Chinese territory.
The trigger was a May 28 summit in Tokyo, where Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi and Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. issued a joint statement announcing the opening of maritime delimitation talks covering their respective exclusive economic zones and continental shelves in the area.
Beijing moved swiftly to condemn the announcement. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning declared that the waters targeted by the talks fall within what Beijing considers its exclusive economic zone east of Taiwan.
"Any negotiations involving maritime delimitation in waters east of Taiwan must involve China," Mao said, adding that Japan and the Philippines violated international law by bypassing Beijing.
Taiwan has separately raised objections, urging Tokyo and Manila to consult Taipei before proceeding, arguing that the delimitation area overlaps with waters in which the island asserts its own "rights and interests."
Japanese Chief Cabinet Secretary Minoru Kihara pushed back against both Beijing and Taipei, stating that any agreement concluded between Japan and the Philippines "would not be legally binding on any third party."
Taiwan's coast guard responded to the Chinese deployment by dispatching at least five vessels "to respond appropriately" to what it described as a violation of international law. Taipei said it monitored four Chinese government ships departing from the Port of Xiamen on the mainland.
The standoff unfolds against a backdrop of deepening friction between China and Japan over Taiwan that has been building since November 2025, when Prime Minister Takaichi became the first Japanese leader to explicitly frame a potential Chinese move on Taiwan as a "survival-threatening situation" that could justify military intervention. Beijing accused Takaichi of invoking a narrative it described as "a go-to tactic for Japanese militarism to launch aggression."
President Xi Jinping has declined to rule out the use of force to achieve what Beijing calls reunification with Taiwan, an island of 23 million people that has governed itself independently for decades.
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