‘Salami slicing’: How China is trying to increase control in the Pacific

Two Chinese officers watch boats sailing in a port in Qingdao in east China's Shandong province Wednesday, Oct. 12, 2022. (Yu Fangping/Feature China/Future Publishing/Getty Images via CNN Newsource)

In a span of just a few weeks, China’s ships have carried out “law enforcement” activities farther from its mainland than ever before, mapped a highly sensitive seabed and conducted “research” inside a highly contested lagoon more than 500 miles from its shores.

China has long been accused of “salami-slicing” to advance its territorial claims in the Pacific, taking small steps well below the threshold of kinetic war to assert its control over areas where its claims to sovereignty under international law are unclear at best – and illegal at worst.

Analysts say the latest moves are an attempt to advance its presence beyond an island chain seen by Beijing and Washington as a critical line of control in the western Pacific. They add they could be particularly worrying for Taiwan, the self-ruled island China has vowed to “reunify” with one day – by force if necessary.

The flurry of maritime maneuvers followed a visit to Beijing by U.S. President Donald Trump that was full of bonhomie, but which Chinese leader Xi Jinping also used to make one thing very clear: the biggest issue that could derail U.S.-China relations was Taiwan.

Earlier this month three vessels from the China’s Maritime Safety Agency (MSA) a civilian law enforcement organization sailed through the Bashi Channel between the Philippines and Taiwan to begin law enforcement and mapping activities in waters east of Taiwan.

Observers say it’s the first time MSA vessels have been observed east of the “First Island Chain” that stretches from southern Japan through Taiwan and the Philippines and along the edges of the southern South China Sea along Borneo to Singapore.

Ray Powell, director of the SeaLight project at Stanford University’s Gordian Knot Center for National Security Innovation, which focuses on China’s gray-zone tactics, called it the “Bashi Breakout.”

Beijing “is essentially saying we have jurisdiction over this area on the other side of the First Island Chain. That’s pretty significant,” he told CNN.

“This is the first time we’ve seen them make some kind of a sovereignty patrol outside of the 9-Dash/10-Dash Line,” Powell told CNN. That line refers to Beijing’s controversial claim over the majority of the South China Sea that its neighbours hotly dispute and which in 2016 the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague ruled had no legal basis.

Beijing was trying to “create new facts on the water,” he told CNN.

China’s state-run tabloid Global Times called the movement of the MSA ships “a sovereignty declaration with both legal significance and political signalling.”

Taiwan challenge

Much of that signalling will have been aimed at Taiwan and its 23 million people.

Through Yuyuan Tantian – a semi-official social media account run by China’s national broadcaster that Beijing often uses to leak out information to gauge international reaction – China said that its MSA vessels had mapped the seabed east of Taiwan for the first time.

That pushed back on foreign assertions that China lacks the ability to exert its authority over the waters, the account said in a post.

“The waters east of Taiwan Island will constitute our ‘nearshore waters’ — the very waters where we maintain a presence and exercise jurisdiction and governance,” it said.

Taiwan President Lai Ching-te said the reasons behind the MSA mission were clear:

“Their (Beijing’s) real objective is to expand,” he said.

A Taiwanese security official said Beijing was using the MSA ships to try to create a false impression that it has de facto jurisdiction over Taiwan.

Lai said that Beijing continues to “innovate” ways to advance its territorial claims and threaten Taiwan and Indo-Pacific countries.

“China’s threats towards Taiwan know no limits,” he told reporters at a recent briefing.

Regarding the waters east of Taiwan, China made its first slice of that salami in 2023, when it expanded the so-called 9-Dash Line that encompassed its claims in the South China Sea to 10 dashes, with the 10th being east of Taiwan.

The People’s Liberation Army Navy has in the past conducted exercises east of Taiwan, but analysts say in the long term, the MSA ships and non-military vessels like them may be the bigger threat to the status quo because they seem less threatening.

Essentially, the MSA vessels perform policing roles to enforce environmental and maritime regulations.

“I think that’s their near-term target… to establish themselves as the constabulary” of the sea approaches to Taiwan, Powell said.

During the recent sailing, the Chinese MSA ships did issue radio challenges to commercial vessels heading to Taiwan, the island’s coast guard has said.

The next step – the “tightening of the boa constrictor” – could be to actually stop those vessels or force them into Chinese ports before they can go onto Taiwan, Powell said.

Targeting ships like liquid natural gas (LNG) carriers could send an ominous message to Taipei – which relies on imports for almost all of its energy needs – he said.

“Something to let Taiwan know we can starve you out when it comes to LNG,” and let that slowly progress to the point where Beijing can control Taiwan’s energy imports, according to Powell.

Additionally, the “nearshore waters” designation floated by the Yuyuan Tantian account, if made by an official government agency, could mean China could treat these waters as sovereign territory, experts said.

“Foreign vessels have no right of entry without permission of the nation with sovereignty over these near-shore waters, said Carl Schuster, a former director of the U.S. Pacific Command’s Joint Intelligence Center.

Foreign powers with interests in Taiwan are taking notice.

“China’s actions are deeply destabilizing,” ​a U.S. State Department spokesperson said regarding reports that Chinese Coast Guard vessels were harassing commercial ships, Reuters reported.

And Britain, France and Germany, in a rare joint statement from their de facto embassies in Taipei, expressed “concern” over “novel Chinese activity in the waters east of Taiwan.”

“These actions threaten regional stability and the freedom of navigation and safety of international shipping,” said the statement from the European powers, which, like the U.S., do not have formal diplomatic ties to Taiwan.

Schuster said the mapping operation off Taiwan has military implications, too.

“It will improve the PLA Navy’s ability to operate its submarines and task groups in those waters. It will also give them a very accurate picture of the undersea cables, any exploitable resources and bottom features that China can exploit to advantage,” Schuster said.

The analysts said recent talks between Japan and the Philippines over overlapping claims in their exclusive economic zones east of Taiwan may have been the impetus for the MSA mission east of Tawain.

Powell said China has such operations lined up and planned well in advance and waits for such triggering events.

“Beijing sensed an opportunity, and moved quickly to call the talks completely illegal and void,” he wrote on the SeaLight blog.

The Taiwanese security official echoed that sentiment.

Over the last decade, China has taken advantage of multiple strategic windows and engaged in expansionist military and gray-zone activities in the Yellow Sea, East China Sea, Taiwan Strait and South China Sea, they said.

“It will be a grave misreading if you only look at China’s regional activities through the lenses” of China-Taiwan tensions, the official said, adding that Japan and the Philippines are bearing the brunt of Beijing’s regional ambitions, too.

CNN has asked China’s MSA for comment.

‘Research vessel ruse’

In the South China Sea, the recent focus has been on Scarborough Shoal, an uninhabited rock with a central lagoon 140 miles (220 kilometres) west of the main Philippine island of Luzon and around 530 miles from China’s Hainan province.

The feature sits well within the Philippines EEZ, but is effectively controlled by China, which has maintained an almost constant Coast Guard presence near it since 2012, according to the Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Recently, a small floating structure appeared on satellite photos near the entrance to the lagoon, raising alarm in and protests from the Philippines. The South China Sea tribunal in 2016 in the Hague has ruled that China cannot legally occupy the shoal.

Later pictures showed the structure being towed within the lagoon.

China claimed the floating structure was conducting maritime research before saying it had been withdrawn last week. Powell tends to agree with China’s explanation – for now.

But they could eventually move on to something larger and permanent, he said.

That’s the worry of Philippine Defense Secretary Gilbert Teodoro, who told the Financial Times last week China has used the research vessel ruse before, pointing to the string of South China Sea islands and atolls that have been turned into military bases, despite a pledge from leader Xi Jinping during a 2015 visit to the White House not to do so.

“If they … lied before, they can lie now,” Teodoro told the FT.

Meanwhile, the U.S. Embassy in Manila on Tuesday said it was giving the Philippines four sea-going drones worth US$13 million, in part to help the country “monitor and respond to maritime challenges,” including “gray-zone activities and threats to freedom of navigation.”

Protests from Washington and other capitals didn’t slow China’s island buildup, and Beijing has learned from that experience, Powell said.

“We can slice a piece off the salami and that sets conditions for the next piece. This is their opportunity to slice off that little piece,” he said of the actions east of Taiwan.

Powell says the possibility of concrete action by the MSA or the China Coast Guard to keep ships from calling in Taiwan, or construction of new facilities on Scarborough Shoal, is “the thing that would keep me up at night.”

“My fear would be that the response from others would be a shrug,” he said.

And that may mean the last piece of salami has been sliced.

Advantage China.

By Brad Lendon, Sylvie Zhuang, Wayne Chang, CNN