Maritime Pressure Expands to Pratas and Taiping
Executive Summary:
- Beijing is expanding its “Kinmen model” of gray-zone maritime pressure to other Taiwan-controlled offshore islands and maritime positions. For over two years, it has used political or maritime triggers to challenge Taiwan-administered boundaries, deploy the China Coast Guard (CCG), and normalize its law-enforcement presence in waters under Taiwan’s effective control, but that Beijing claims as its own jurisdiction.
- Activity in June and July has involved a combination of CCG vessels, maritime safety ships, research vessels, rescue assets, and Sansha-linked public vessels. These vessels have operated across waters east of Taiwan, Pratas Island, and Taiping Island—a multi-axis pattern that suggests a broad campaign focused on Taiwan’s outlying islands.
- Pratas Island, at the northern edge of the South China Sea, has become the clearest next testing ground, with CCG and Maritime Safety Administration presence rising from 25 activity days in 2024 to 60 in 2025.
- Pratas is closer to the operational area of the People’s Liberation Army’s Southern Theater Command than other offshore islands. It is also strategically significant and politically symbolic as one of Taiwan’s most important outposts in the South China Sea, and would be more difficult for Taiwan to support in a crisis.
On June 27, China Coast Guard (CCG) vessel 3101 entered Taiwan’s restricted waters around Pratas Island (also known as Dongsha). Taiwan responded by dispatching its Coast Guard Administration (CGA) vessel CG1002 Taichung to intercept. As the two faced off, the CCG vessel broadcast a message to the CGA vessel: “the Republic of China does not exist” (中华民国不存在). The CGA vessel responded in both Mandarin and English, stating that the Republic of China (Taiwan) is a sovereign state and is not subordinate to the People’s Republic of China (PRC) (Taiwan Ocean Affairs Council [OAC], June 27). Two days later, four CCG vessels entered Taiwan’s restricted waters around the island of Kinmen, prompting the CGA to deploy four vessels in response (Xinhua; OAC, June 29).
These incidents are part of an ongoing pressure campaign that is often referred to as the “Kinmen model” (金门模式). Under this model, the PRC seeks to advance its strategy of annexing Taiwan through the incremental normalization of law enforcement activities and the assertion of maritime jurisdiction in Taiwan’s “restricted and prohibited waters” (禁限水域) (China Brief, June 18). Its latest activities should be seen as part of this broader pattern of behavior and not, as the PRC claimed, as a response to Japan and the Philippines initiating talks on the delimitation of their exclusive economic zones and continental shelves. As a July 4 statement warned, the CCG “will continue to strengthen” (将持续加强) patrols in waters east of Taiwan, likely indicating a more regularized pattern of maritime law enforcement activity (CCTV, July 4).
Kinmen Incident Creates New Model for CCG Incursions
The term “Kinmen model” was coined in May 2024 by Yuyuan Tantian (玉渊谭天), a WeChat account affiliated with China Central Television (CCTV) (Yuyuan Tantian, May 12, 2024). The article referred to CCG actions surrounding Kinmen as “law enforcement patrols” (执法巡查). While the article traced the term’s origins, it neglected to mention the immediate trigger for a more assertive posture in the Taiwan Strait.
On February 14, 2024, a Chinese motorboat entered Taiwan’s restricted and prohibited waters around Kinmen, fled a CGA inspection, and capsized, leaving two PRC nationals dead (China Brief, March 29, 2024). Beijing responded by disregarding Taiwan’s territorial rights and increasing CCG patrols in the area (Taipei Times, February 28, 2024; AMTI, December 6, 2024). By February 2025, the CGA reported that CCG ships had entered Kinmen’s restricted waters 60 times in the year following the incident (CGA, February 25, 2025). Subsequent Taiwanese reporting indicates that the pattern remained persistent, with 117 patrol voyages from 2024 through May 31, 2026, including 52 in 2024, 46 in 2025, and 19 in the first five months of 2026, as shown in Figure 1 (Liberty Times, May 31).
Analysis of CCG activity suggests that the Kinmen model has four components: incident, enforcement, propaganda, and normalization. First, Beijing uses an incident or diplomatic trigger to argue that Taiwan’s existing maritime boundaries are illegitimate. Second, it deploys coast guard, maritime safety, research, or other government vessels into Taiwan-administered waters under an innocuous pretext. Third, PRC official and state-media narratives frame these deployments as legitimate efforts to safeguard Beijing’s territorial sovereignty and maritime rights and interests. Fourth, Beijing repeats the activity until the previous boundary begins to look contestable, subsequently making its incursions part of normalized law enforcement operations.
The CCG’s official language indicates that its behavior is tied to a broader state strategy. In a February 2026 article marking five years since the China Coast Guard Law (中国海警法) took effect, the CCG stated that it had conducted law-enforcement patrols around “Taiwan island and its affiliated islands” (台岛及其附属岛屿), and said it was shaping a new maritime rights protection posture and building a new framework for managing the Taiwan Strait under its one-China principle (Xinhua, January 23, 2021). The article went on to characterize the CCG’s actions as “strongly deterring the path of ‘Taiwanese independence’ and separatism” (有力震慑“台独”分裂行径) (CCG, February 1). Claims that it is merely policing fisheries or maintaining maritime safety are thus belied by actions explicitly designed to help Beijing advance sovereignty claims through the routinization of administrative practice.
Figure 1: CCG Patrol Voyages into Kinmen Restricted Waters, 2024–May 31, 2026
(Source: Liberty Times)
Pratas is the Next Testing Ground
The original Yuyuan Tantian article that coined the term “Kinmen Model” quoted an expert as saying that the model “could also be applied to Matsu, Penghu [referring to other outlying islands of Taiwan], and even the entire Taiwan Strait” (也可以适用于马祖、澎湖，乃至是整个台湾海峡). Two years on, CCG activity suggests that it is now extending this model further from Taiwan’s nearshore waters.
Pratas, located at the northern edge of the South China Sea, is administered by Taiwan but is far more distant from its main island than Kinmen or Matsu. It is also closer to the southern PRC coast and to the operational area of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) Southern Theater Command. These features make the island valuable as a pressure point: it is strategically significant, politically symbolic as one of Taiwan’s most important outposts in the South China Sea, and would be more difficult for Taiwan to support in a crisis.
Chinese law-enforcement activity around Pratas has ramped up dramatically since 2024. The Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative’s analysis of automatic identification system (AIS) data and CGA reporting found no observed activity in 2021 and only limited activity in 2022 and 2023. Activity rose after 2023, with 25 days in 2024 in which activity was observed, and 60 in 2025, as shown in Figure 2 below (AMTI, March 30). This article uses AMTI’s activity-day data to show the broader trend of growing PRC presence around Pratas, not as a separate count of restricted-waters incursions.
Figure 2: Observed CCG/MSA Activity Days around Pratas Island
(Source: AMTI)
The nature of PRC activity around Pratas has also changed. Instead of an occasional single CCG ship passing near the island, today Chinese fishing vessels enter restricted or prohibited waters, ships loiter nearby, and CCG vessels appear during Taiwan’s enforcement actions or turn off their AIS trackers.
When a Chinese fishing vessel entered waters around Pratas in March 2025, for instance, the CGA sought to expel them. The CCG intervened, however, with personnel from CCG vessel 3101 boarding the fishing boat. Taiwanese authorities assessed that the CCG may have been using the Chinese fishing vessel to map out CGA deployments in the area while its CCG deployments “aimed to manufacture an appearance of law enforcement” (企圖製造執法假象) (CGA, November 9, 2025). More recently, during a 32-hour encounter near Pratas between the CGA’s Taichung patrol vessel and the same CCG vessel, the CCG stated that it was conducting a routine patrol in addition to language delegitimizing Taiwanese sovereignty (CTS, May 24). These incidents show that Beijing is using its coast guard to maintain a physical presence in Taiwan-administered waters while engaging in lawfare to normalize its right to conduct law enforcement activities (CGA, May 27).
Pratas shows how Beijing can mix maritime law enforcement with militarized gray-zone activity. On January 17, Taiwan’s Ministry of National Defense (MND) reported that a PRC reconnaissance drone had entered the Pratas airspace for approximately four minutes (MND, January 17). The PLA Southern Theater Command then claimed that the drone was conducting “normal flight training” (正常飞行训练) near “China’s Dongsha Island” (中国东沙岛) and that its actions were “completely legitimate and legal” (完全正当合法) (CCTV, January 17). By coupling PLA training activities with sovereignty erosion, Beijing is able simultaneously to advance its military capabilities and to press its territorial claims. At the same time, the drone incursion represents a literal escalation in its assault on Taiwan’s sovereignty from encroaching on its territorial waters to violating its airspace. Pratas is no longer just a coast guard issue and is becoming a testing ground for combined legal pressure in both maritime and aerial domains.
Multi-Point Pressure After Japan–Philippines Maritime Delimitation Talks
The events of June 2026 show Beijing moving to exert maritime pressure on Taiwan across multiple locations. The decision of Japan and the Philippines to begin maritime boundary delimitation talks has focused attention on waters east of Taiwan. Beijing has added to this focus, arguing that Japan and the Philippines are infringing on PRC sovereignty and maritime rights (CCG, June 1; China Brief, June 11). Its response, however, has not remained confined to Taiwan’s eastern waters, but has spread across three axes: east of Taiwan, Pratas, and Taiping Island (太平島, also known as Itu Aba).
The institutional support for this multi-axis response emerged in the spring, when the CCG convened the 2026 Maritime Law Enforcement Work Meeting (2026 年海上执法工作会议) in Hangzhou. The meeting, which also involved the ministries of public security, natural resources, ecology and environment, transport, and agriculture and rural affairs, as well as the General Administration of Customs, emphasized improving the legal framework for maritime law enforcement, deepening coordination, sharing information, expanding intelligent monitoring tools, and increasing aviation-force deployment (CCG, April 10).
June operations east of Taiwan and around Pratas reflected this interdepartmental coordination, combining maritime traffic enforcement, survey activity, coast guard escorts, research vessels, rescue assets, and local public vessels. It is likely that, as in previous activities around Taiwan, a diplomatic incident served merely as a pretext for premeditated action.
First, on June 5–6, the vessel CCG 3501 patrolled around Pratas’s restricted waters. On June 6, Taiwan detected the research vessel Hai Silu 6 (海丝路6号) entering waters roughly 33 nautical miles southeast of the island. The CGA dispatched additional vessels, including the Kaohsiung patrol ship (高雄艦), to respond and described the incident as the first case in which a PRC research vessel and CCG vessel appeared to work together in a provocation near Taiwan-controlled waters (CGA, June 6).
Second, from June 6–10, the Ministry of Transport organized the provincial maritime safety administrations of Fujian and Guangdong, the East China Sea Navigation Security Center, and the East China Sea Rescue Bureau to conduct what it called a “special maritime traffic law-enforcement and surveying operation east of Taiwan” (海上交通专项执法和扫测行动). The operation involved four vessels: the Haixun (海巡) vessels 09, 06, and 08, and the search and rescue vessel Donghai Jiu 113 (东海救 113) (Xinhua, June 10).
Third, from June 16–18, the East China Sea Bureau under the Ministry of Natural Resources sent a research vessel, Xiangyanghong 22 (向阳红 22) to conduct what Beijing described as a “marine environmental survey” (海洋环境调查) in waters east of Taiwan, accompanied by two CCG vessels. This marked an escalation from earlier research-vessel activity around Taiwan, because the research mission was backed by coast guard escorts, providing a law-enforcement shield for nominally scientific activity (Xinhua, June 18).
Fourth, Taiping Island, Taiwan’s only occupied natural island in the Spratly Islands (南沙群島), has become a new observation point, though not yet a pressure point on the same scale as Kinmen or Pratas. On June 11, PRC government vessels Sansha Zhifa 301 (三沙执法 301) and Sansha 2 (三沙2号) briefly entered Taiwan’s restricted and prohibited waters around Taiping Island for the first time (X/@TAIWANoac, June 11). The CGA condemned the action and dispatched vessels to expel them (CGA, June 11).
Unlike the CCG and MSA operations east of Taiwan, Sansha vessels are linked to the Sansha local government system, which the PRC uses to administer parts of its South China Sea claims, allowing it to distance its actions from constituting overt military coercion. If repeated, such activity could gradually raise the cost of Taiwan’s presence through administrative patrols, radio warnings, research activity, or interference with resupply, while allowing the PRC to insist that its actions are routine. The Taiping case should therefore be treated for now as an early warning indicator rather than part of an established pattern.
Conclusion
The PRC’s expanding maritime pressure against Taiwan’s offshore islands is best understood as a campaign of jurisdictional normalization. After activity around Kinmen established an initial model, Pratas has now become a key testing ground, and Taiping may be emerging as the next pressure point.
These recent cases at Taiwan’s periphery show how the PRC is steadily shifting the baseline operating environment without actions as dramatic as declaring a blockade, launching a major exercise, or seizing an island. By using small incidents to justify an enforcement presence, creating a record of activity based on that presence, and then transforming that record into propaganda presenting the activity as legitimate, the PRC can erode Taiwan’s previous baseline, making it much harder to defend (Foreign Affairs, May 8).
Discussions of security in the Taiwan Strait often treat Taiwan’s offshore islands as peripheral. This makes them attractive targets for gray-zone pressure, and allows the PRC to test Taiwan’s law-enforcement capacity, command-and-control procedures, civil–military coordination, and political resolve to defend maritime boundaries without immediately crossing the threshold of war (China Brief, June 18).
The views expressed are solely those of the authors and do not represent the positions of the National Defense University, the Ministry of National Defense, or the government of ROC (Taiwan).
