The Republic of China’s coast guard says that the number of PRC ships in waters close to Taiwan increased sharply in June as part of what one Taipei official calls an “anaconda strategy” (News24, July 20, 2026).
A total of 263 Chinese ships, including coast guard, rescue and research vessels, were detected in waters around Taiwan and its outer islands in June, compared with 200 a month earlier, and 171 in June 2025.
The figures do not include warships….
China launched “law enforcement” patrols in waters east of Taiwan last month, which Taipei has branded as “provocative” and “expansionism in disguise”. [In disguise?]
Until June, China Coast Guard’s presence in the Western Pacific had been largely limited to participation in military drills around Taiwan.
During the operation, the China Coast Guard for the first time radioed cargo ships passing Taiwan for information about their crew and destination.
A senior government official said China’s aim was not only to disrupt shipping, but to “prevent Taiwan from receiving supplies” by stopping commercial ships from entering its ports.
“What it is trying to do is put into practice what it has long talked about—using quarantine-like measures to carry out an anaconda strategy against Taiwan,” he said on the condition of anonymity.
Presumably, the unnamed official means that China was rehearsing for the putting into practice of an anaconda strategy. The PRC is not currently imposing a blockade on Taiwan.
Japan
The acceleration of the PRC’s slow-motion approach to war or to launching of war against the ROC has recently been supplemented by joint Chinese-Russian harassment of Japan consisting of a live-fire drill conducted within Japan’s exclusive economic zone.
Japan has lodged a diplomatic protest; a Chinese foreign ministry spokesman, Lin Jian, calls the complaint “completely unreasonable…. Japan is smearing and hyping up the legitimate actions of other countries.” The CCP must forbid its spokesmen from reading from different cards.
According to a July 21 Reuters report, “China and Russia have stepped up joint naval and air operations around Japan in recent years, prompting Tokyo to increase surveillance and strengthen its defences across the archipelago…. In another high-profile incident in December, Japan said Chinese fighter jets aimed their radar at Japanese military aircraft near its Okinawa islands, an account Beijing disputed.”
The report also states, per a spokesman for the Japanese military, that this “was the first time Tokyo had publicly disclosed China’s live-fire drills in its EEZ.” Reuters’s paraphrase could be read as suggesting that China has previously conducted at least one previous live-fire drill in Japan’s EEZ that Japan knew about but did not report. Similarly ambiguous wording occurs in a Japan Today piece: “It is the first time the ministry has spotted a live-fire drill by the Chinese military within the Japanese EEZ and subsequently made it public.”
However, at least in recent years Japan has been routinely and notably transparent about foreign military activity in its vicinity and each ratcheting up of PRC hutzpah.
Also see:
StoptheCCP.org: “Japan to the Rescue in the South China Sea?”
“Japan, it seems to me, will cleverly set up countries with detection and records-keeping equipment that greatly expands the volume of known incidents, thereby greatly expanding China’s reputation as an aggressor and greatly facilitating mobilization of anti-Chinese opinion.”
