ANALYSIS/Chinese Coast Guard takes on new role in encircling Taiwan: Scholars

Taipei, Oct. 15 (CNA) The China Coast Guard (CCG) took on a novel and important role during the "Joint Sword-2024B" military drills, being deployed for the first time on Monday to encircle Taiwan and practice enforcing a blockade in the event of an invasion, scholars told CNA.

The military exercises ran from 5:02 a.m. to 6:04 p.m. on Monday, covered areas in the Taiwan Strait and areas to the north, south and east of Taiwan, involving the army, navy, air force and rocket force of the Chinese People's Liberation Army (PLA), according to China's defense ministry.

Apart from the PLA's involvement, the CCG also played a significant role during the drills on Monday, said Tzeng Wei-feng (曾偉峯), an assistant research fellow at National Chengchi University's Institute of International Relations, on Tuesday.

The CCG conducted "law enforcement exercises" only in the waters east of Taiwan during the "Joint Sword-2024A" drills in May, but during Monday's drills, it expanded those operations "from a single area east of Taiwan to encircle the entire island," the Chinese state-owned China Central Television reported.

Based on the areas covered by the CCG vessels during the drills, Tzeng noted that it is likely the CCG would play "a crucial role in enforcing a blockade" of waters around Taiwan in the event of an invasion, thus enabling the PLA to mainly focus on deterring "external forces" from the east, such as military units from the United States and Japan.

"This is quite different from previous exercises," Tzeng said, adding that the participation of the CCG in the PLA's drills also raises the question of whether, in the future, China will use it to engage in more "gray-zone conflict" against Taiwan.

"It could include (CCG's) boarding inspections or directly intercepting Taiwanese vessels to carry out so-called harassment," he noted.

He also attributed the CCG's more prominent role to the "localization" of the Taiwan Strait in rhetoric used by Beijing, thereby emphasizing its claim that Taiwan is part of Chinese territory and the strait part of its territorial waters.

"The CCG's role is relatively less sensitive compared to the PLA, as it is not a direct military force -- although it is still armed," Tzeng said.

If China wants to emphasize the "localization" of the Taiwan Strait, the CCG's law enforcement activities in the strait play an important role in highlighting such a narrative, he explained.

Echoing Tzeng, Wen-Ti Sung (宋文笛), a nonresident fellow with the Atlantic Council's Global China Hub, also described Beijing's first-time use of the CCG to encircle Taiwan as a "novelty," while noting that Kinmen's exclusion from the military drills might be due to Beijing penciling the Taiwan-held island into the CCG's sphere of operation, "rather than the PLA's."

Meanwhile, the "remarkably short duration" of the drills was something worth noting, Sung said.

The half-day duration of the military exercises was likely driven by "both tension management and cost management," in light of the U.S. presidential campaign and the Chinese government's own ongoing fiscal problems, he added.

After President Lai Ching-te's (賴清德) National Day speech on Oct. 10, China used Monday's drills to "send a very visual display of its displeasure" over Lai, Sung noted.

By holding the drills, Beijing also aimed to send a message to Washington, urging the U.S. to "stop enabling the internationalization of the Taiwan issue," the Taipei-based scholar said.

In the future, Sung predicted that Beijing may increase the frequency of military exercises to "normalize" such action but decrease the intensity of drills to "manage costs and regional states' threat perception of China."

In his National Day speech, Lai said that the "Republic of China (Taiwan's official name) and the People's Republic of China (PRC, China's official name) are not subordinate to each other," adding that the PRC "has no right to represent Taiwan."