China's 'Grey-zone' maritime offensive exposed

The sun had barely risen on a calm Wednesday morning in Taiwan when alarms began to sound quietly within the maritime surveillance stations.

- ASHISH SINGH

A seemingly innocuous cruise liner, the Gulangyu, registered in Bermuda but operated from China, sailed unsettlingly close to Taiwan's Hengchun Peninsula—just two nautical miles from shore.

From the beaches of Pingtung County, Taiwanese residents watched as the vessel loomed unusually near, capturing the tense spectacle on their smartphones. Within hours, the images flooded social media alongside defiant captions proclaiming: "Taiwan is China."

For Ocean Affairs Council Minister Kuan Bi-ling, this was no benign cruise ship gone astray. Rather, she identified the Gulangyu's passage as part of China's broader "grey zone" strategy—a calculated set of coercive actions designed to assert dominance and intimidate regional adversaries without crossing the threshold into open warfare.

Across maritime Asia, such episodes have become increasingly frequent, indicating a sophisticated Chinese playbook that leverages civilian vessels as strategic pawns in geopolitical chess. Taiwan's unsettling encounter resonates with the experiences of countless Filipino fishermen battling daily harassment from Chinese maritime militia vessels in the contested waters of Scarborough Shoal. These distant yet interconnected events reflect a systematic Chinese effort to rewrite maritime boundaries, not through traditional military conflict, but through persistent, incremental provocations.

Since 2012, Filipino fishermen around Scarborough Shoal have become the face of China's grey zone campaign in the South China Sea. Chinese Coast Guard ships and civilian militia vessels regularly execute deliberate "blocking formations," preventing Philippine access to historically rich fishing grounds.