Beijing extends its coercive campaign against neighbors
FORUM Staff
Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leaders complain about a rules-based order in which Beijing did not make the rules. By refusing to accept international laws that protect the global economy and the security of his Indo-Pacific neighbors, CCP General Secretary Xi Jinping offers a preview of the authoritarian system he favors.
Coercive CCP military activity in and around the Taiwan Strait in early December 2024 followed an overseas trip by Taiwan President Lai Ching-te, who stopped in Hawaii and the United States territory of Guam during a Pacific tour. The People’s Republic of China (PRC) claims Taiwan as its territory and threatens to annex the self-governing island by force. It opposes Taipei’s relations with the U.S. and other governments.
Taiwan’s Foreign Ministry said Beijing deployed multiple CCP naval and coast guard ships near the island, Japan and the Philippines. Officials said such moves seek to suggest that strategic waterways — including the Taiwan Strait, a conduit for more than $2 trillion in annual global commerce — belong to the PRC, according to the Taipei Times.
Disrupting that trade, such as with a CCP-threatened invasion or blockade, would have worldwide repercussions, experts say. The CCP military exercise was its third near Taiwan in 2024.
The U.S. and its Allies and Partners routinely transit the strait with ships and aircraft to reinforce its status as international airspace and waters.
“Any confrontation over Taiwan will necessitate control of adjacent waters,” wrote analysts for the U.S.-based Heritage Foundation think tank. “This can help to explain why for the past 10 years China has steadily increased its maritime presence in the South China Sea: a concentrated effort to turn that sea into a Chinese lake.”
Beijing claims almost all of the South China Sea in defiance of a 2016 international tribunal ruling that invalidated the assertion. The CCP has intensified its efforts to harass Philippine fishing, military and law enforcement crews operating in Manila’s exclusive economic zone (EEZ).
More than 100 CCP Coast Guard ships and maritime militia vessels have continuously interfered with resupply missions to a Philippine military outpost at Second Thomas Shoal and have expanded their harassment to other areas well within the Philippines’ internationally recognized waters, reported Foreign Policy magazine.
Manila, a longtime U.S. treaty Ally, has embarked on a campaign of assertive transparency to expose CCP belligerence in the South China Sea as the Philippines refuses to yield its sovereignty to Beijing. Analysts say the campaign has boosted national support for domestic security capabilities and international partnerships to uphold stability.
Meanwhile, the CCP also is pressing its arbitrary South China Sea claims in Indonesian, Malaysian and Vietnamese EEZs. The countries have rejected Beijing’s demands that they stop drilling for oil in their own waters. Hanoi in October 2024 rebuked the “brutal behavior” of PRC law enforcement officers who boarded a Vietnamese fishing vessel in contested waters and assaulted its crew.
In the East China Sea, CCP ships continue encroaching into Japanese-controlled waters around the Senkaku Islands. Tokyo’s Foreign Affairs Ministry accused Beijing of unilateral attempts to change the status quo by force or coercion. “This includes approaching Japanese fishing vessels inside Japanese territorial waters and intrusions by ships mounted with artillery,” it stated.
Xi has claimed his vision for a “global community” prioritizes economic development and common prosperity. Neighboring countries that pushed back on Beijing’s coercion in 2024 do not seem convinced.
