Global Courant 2023-04-17 19:00:54
TAIPEI – Earlier in April, China’s maritime police said they would survey and inspect cargo ships and construction vessels in the Taiwan Strait as part of a three-day special operation that alerted Taipei.
Officially, the move was to “ensure the safety of shipping and ensure the safe and orderly operation of key waterborne projects,” according to the Fujian Maritime Safety Administration.
But Taiwanese officials and analysts saw it as something else — a new gray zone tactic, or coercion, designed to intimidate while stopping a conventional war.
The Chinese ship inspection plan, launched just hours before Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen was due to meet with Speaker of the US House of Representatives Kevin McCarthy in California, was widely seen as a retaliatory measure to show his displeasure with the island, which the claims sovereignty.
In the end, China did not inspect any ships, but the announcement alone was enough to ruffle the springs in Taipei.
Taiwan’s transportation ministry said it has issued a strong protest to China and instructed shipping companies to deny such requests from China if they come across them.
Meanwhile, Defense Minister Chiu Kuo-cheng, who described the move as “unreasonable”, warned of similar situations in the future.
Taiwan has for years accused China of employing a wide variety of gray zone tactics to intimidate the island and undermine the morale of the Taiwanese people, for example through diplomatic and economic pressure, or through information warfare.
While no one is physically injured, there are fears that such moves increase the risk of miscalculation and military conflict, defense analysts said.
“Accidents are always possible, and doing these things only increases the risk of an accident,” said Dr. Lee Junyun-yi, an expert in unconventional warfare strategies at Taiwan’s Institute for National Defense and Security Research (INDSR) think tank ). .
“But China will continue to try to come up with new tactics in the gray 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 sees activity in the gray zone as “a natural extension of how countries wield power,” and a way to pressure others to act in accordance with its interests.
Beijing has employed nearly 80 different gray zone tactics against Japan, Vietnam, India and the Philippines over the past decade, the US think tank said, but Taiwan bore the brunt of the “widest variety of tactics.”
Dr. Lee noted that this is one reason gray zone warfare is so concerning for Taipei: what it entails is constantly changing.
