Will China Attack Taiwan?

As a Chinese takeover of Taiwan looms, the United States is facing its greatest challenge in the Pacific since World War II.

- By Ryan Ho Kilpatrick

Never mind. It already is.

Rugged, sparsely populated and weathered by storm-tossed seas, Taiwan's Matsu Islands rarely feel like a potential flashpoint between the world's superpowers. The skies over this isolated archipelago five and a half miles off the Chinese mainland dim so dramatically after the sun sinks into the Taiwan Strait that part of it is seeking international recognition as a dark-sky island.”

Except, that is, on the nights that fleets of Chinese fishing boats called “squid jiggers” encircle its craggy shores and set the night ablaze with heavy-duty green LEDs used to simulate sunlight and draw their quarry into purse-seiner nets near the water's surface. In daylight, these ships are often replaced by the skull-rattling drone of Chinese sand-dredging vessels. Their operations are harming marine ecosystems, driving some birds to the brink of extinction and destroying submarine cables in the quest to feed the insatiable Chinese construction industry.

To Wen Lii, director of the local chapter of Taiwan's ruling Democratic Progressive Party, these Chinese activities aren't just a nuisance or even criminal. They're a form of gray zone tactics. Though no official definition exists of these increasingly common quasi-military provocations, the Harvard National Security Journal defines them as state activities used to “gain a strategic advantage over an adversary while remaining below the level that would trigger a military response.”