April 18, 2023
SINGAPORE – Earlier in April, the Chinese maritime police said they would board and inspect cargo ships and construction vessels in the Taiwan Strait as part of a special three-day operation that alarmed Taipei.
Officially, the move was intended to “ensure the safety of vessel navigation and ensure the safe and orderly operation of key projects on water”, said the Fujian Maritime Safety Administration.
But Taiwanese officials and analysts viewed it as something else – a new grey-zone tactic, or a coercive action, designed to intimidate while stopping short of a conventional war.
Launched just hours before Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen was due to meet United States House Speaker Kevin McCarthy in California, China’s ship inspection plan was widely regarded as a retaliatory measure to show its displeasure towards the island, over which it claims sovereignty.
In the end, China did not inspect any ships, but the announcement alone was enough to ruffle feathers in Taipei.
Taiwan’s transport ministry said it has lodged a strong protest with Beijing, and instructed shipping operators to refuse such requests from China if they encounter them.
For years, Taiwan has accused China of employing a wide range of grey-zone tactics to intimidate the island and undermine the morale of the Taiwanese people, such as through diplomatic and economic pressures, or means of information warfare.
Defence Minister Chiu Kuo-cheng warned of a fresh wave of such tactics, saying that there will be “many similar situations” like the ship inspection operation in the future.
For years, Taiwan has accused China of employing a wide range of grey-zone tactics to intimidate the island and undermine the morale of the Taiwanese people, such as through diplomatic and economic pressures, or means of information warfare.
While no one is getting physically hurt, the fear is that such moves raise the risk of miscalculation and military conflict, defence analysts said.
“Accidents are always possible, and doing these things will only make the risk of an accident even higher,” said Dr Lee Jyun-yi, an expert in unconventional warfare strategies at Taiwan’s Institute for National Defence and Security Research (INDSR) think-tank.
“But China will keep trying to come up with new tactics in the grey zone, and hope that at least some of them will work to create tension in Taiwan,” he added.
According to a 2022 study published by California-based Rand Corp, China views grey-zone activities as “a natural extension of how countries exercise power”, and a way to pressure others to act according to its interests.
Beijing has over the past decade employed nearly 80 different grey-zone tactics against Japan, Vietnam, India and the Philippines, the US think-tank said, but Taiwan received the brunt of the “greatest variety of tactics”.
Dr Lee noted that this is one of the reasons why grey-zone warfare is so worrying for Taipei: What it entails constantly changes.
When China said last week that it would impose a three-day no-fly zone to the north of Taiwan, defence analysts immediately classified this as yet another grey-zone tactic to threaten and blockade parts of the island.
Beijing later said it had launched a weather satellite, and put the measure in place due to the possibility of falling rocket debris. Taiwan said the no-fly period was cut to 27 minutes after it protested.
“Whether or not it was really just to launch a satellite, Beijing exploited the event to send a strong message to the world that it is capable of ruling the airspace near Taiwan,” Dr Lee said.
“That’s the thing about grey-zone activities – you cannot say for certain that they were done to undermine you, but they’re nonetheless threatening and have real consequences.”
He also cited economic sanctions such as Beijing’s import ban on Taiwanese citrus fruit and certain types of fish in August 2022, which came one day after then US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi visited Taipei.
At the time, China said the measure was implemented over food safety concerns.
The measure had limited impact on Taiwan’s overall economy, but it left many farmers and fishermen in limbo, stuck with stock that they could not sell to their largest export market.
“Beijing would always present some sort of technical justification for their grey-zone activities, but we all know they’re not the real reasons behind them,” Dr Lee said.
Dr Chen Liang-chih, a fellow INDSR military expert, highlighted another reason why China sees merit in continually employing such tactics: In Beijing’s mission of ultimately bringing the island under its control, these moves serve as good tests of Taipei’s reactions.
“We should treat these grey-zone activities as part of China’s preparation for a possible invasion of Taiwan. They’re threatening and dangerous to Taiwan, for sure.”