Lawfare
Date: November 17, 2020
By Sean Quirk

An uptick in Chinese military activity around Taiwan and China Coast Guard presence at the Senkakus have kept the region on edge. Beijing seems keen to use military action short of war to test both maritime boundaries and the patience of officials in Taipei, Tokyo and Washington. Such a “shadowboxing” strategy is consistent with long-standing Chinese efforts that began at least in 2012 to “win without fighting” in the South and East China Seas. But the strategy is hardly novel, as it is a core premise in Sun Tzu’s Art of War: “to fight and conquer in all your battles is not supreme excellence; supreme excellence consists in breaking the enemy’s resistance without fighting.” Resistance from Taiwan, Japan and the United States, however, shows little sign of breaking.

Fortress Taiwan

The Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) held a large-scale military exercise in the provinces bordering Taiwan to simulate an island invasion on Oct. 10, coinciding with Taiwan’s National Day. The exercise demonstrated joint integration among China’s military branches and featured drones, special forces and airborne troops. A video released by Chinese state media depicted live-fire rocket launches and a nighttime amphibious landing. The same day, Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen delivered a speech urging the People’s Republic of China (PRC) to engage in peaceful dialogue with the island nation. In addition to increased PLA live-fire exercises around Taiwan, PLA aircraft have continued to violate Taiwan’s Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ)—airspace in which Taiwanese authorities identify, locate and control inbound aircraft—despite repeated protests from Taipei. Taiwan’s Ministry of National Defense reports that nearly 40 days of PLA ADIZ incursions have occurred since mid-September.

Apart from shadowboxing PLA aircraft, Taiwan has been encountering another intruder: Chinese sand thieves. Civilian vessels from mainland China have reportedly been converging on Taiwan’s Matsu Islands (Mandarin: Mǎzǔ Lièdǎo) to extract sand, sometimes appearing in numbers of 400–500 Chinese vessels. The islands are more than 100 nautical miles from Taiwan but only 10 nautical miles from the mainland Chinese province of Fujian. Whether the Chinese vessels are dredging sand for commercial purposes or as an intimidation tactic is unclear. One Taiwanese analyst found the action analogous to the ADIZ incursions as a PRC gray zone tactic—coercive aggression below the threshold of war to exhaust Taiwanese resources responding to incursions. Taiwan has confiscated at least six Chinese sand dredgers this year, before fining the operators or selling the ships. Taiwan’s Coast Guard Administration also posted a video in October of one of its vessels using a water cannon to drive away a Chinese sand dredger.    [FULL  STORY]