The mainland sent a record number of ships to the vicinity of Taiwan in July 2026, reports the Republic of China. The tally doesn’t even include warships, “which China’s military deploys around Taiwan on a near-daily basis.” Yes, of course also warships, no need to count… (Taipei Times, August 28, 2026).
The coast guard warned of an increasingly severe situation, as analysts say the increased activity is part of China’s bid to map the region for submarine warfare.
The number of Chinese ships detected around Taiwan proper soared to a record 244 last month—an average of nearly eight every day, official data showed.
That compares with 55 ships detected in June and 30 in May, and 58 in July last year. In the first 21 days of this month, 152 vessels were detected. About 60 percent were coast guard ships, with research vessels and other government boats making up the rest….
While Taiwan faces the constant threat of a Chinese invasion, China’s increasing maritime presence has also fueled concerns about a potential quarantine or blockade to prevent ships carrying energy or other critical supplies from entering or leaving its ports.
China operates more than “120 oceanographic research vessels,” the CGA [ROC Coast Guard Administration] said previously.
The CGA suggests that mainland vessels like the Tong Ji, which in May was probably engaged in “oceanographic sampling and seabed survey operations,” are helping to build a database that would be useful for antisubmarine warfare.
The exact routes of undersea cables are among the handy items of information: “This month, China’s Xiang Yang Hong 03 research vessel was observed operating within Taiwan and Japan’s exclusive economic zones, moving over deep sea trenches and telecoms cables, said Jason Wang, chief operating officer of ingeniSPACE, which analyzes satellite imagery and ship signals data.”
Whether accidentally or deliberately, PRC vessels have severed undersea cables near Taiwan and elsewhere. We know that the cables could be a target in wartime because they have been a target in peacetime. One analyst suggests that the purpose of the cable-severing is to “test the limits of international tolerance through aggressive tactics that stop short of acts of war.” That’s also the purpose of the constant harassment of Taiwan and maybe 90 percent of what the People’s Republic does elsewhere in the world.
Also see:
Indo-Pacific Defense Forum: “Undersea cable cutting attacks appear linked to the PRC” (January 28, 2025)
“On January 3, 2025, the Chinese-owned Shunxin-39, a Cameroon- and Tanzania-registered cargo ship with an all-Chinese crew, damaged four cores of a cable near Yehliu, a cape in New Taipei City…
“Herming Chiueh, Taiwan’s deputy digital affairs minister, told The Wall Street Journal that the cable damage was almost certainly intentional. ‘You need to accidentally [drop your] anchor on the cable, and then you need to accidentally turn on your engine with the anchor down, and even [if] you realize your anchor is down, you need to keep the engine moving until you cut the cable,’ Chiueh said.”
