The Water Cannon, the Barrier, the Flag, the Baton, the Live Round

Water cannons at Scarborough Shoal in February. A 352-meter floating barrier blocking the entrance in April. Coast guard personnel wading onto an unoccupied sandbar at Sandy Cay in May, planting a flag and sweeping with metal detectors. A wooden baton striking a Philippine sailor's head at Second Thomas Shoal in July. And that same week, a Luyang III-class destroyer firing live rounds inside Japan's claimed exclusive economic zone, a Russian frigate alongside. Each step is more confrontational than the last. Each converts a line on a map into something a person can touch. And none of them is an isolated incident. What connects water cannons, floating barriers, flag-planting, baton strikes, and live-fire drills is not simply that they are all Chinese operations in disputed waters. It is that they are four instruments deployed in concert — island infrastructure, coast guard "law enforcement," research-vessel probes, and live-fire drills — each timed to counter or preempt allied exercises and bilateral talks, each pushing the same boundary outward. The timing is not subtle. When the Philippines, the United States, Australia, and Japan gathered for the annual Balikatan exercises in late April, China's coast guard and navy conducted combat-readiness patrols around Scarborough Shoal, radioing Philippine vessels with a formulation that left no ambiguity about what was being asserted. ^[1]

Your behavior is not innocent passage and has violated Chinese laws and regulations. — China Coast Guard

Not "China claims." Not "China considers." The present tense of jurisdiction, delivered over a radio while ordering foreign vessels to leave. That same month, a 352-meter floating barrier appeared at the entrance of Scarborough Shoal, blocking access with fishing boats, maritime militia, and a coast guard vessel — in waters the 2016 Hague arbitration ruling said China had no right to obstruct. ^[2] When Japan and the Philippines opened maritime boundary talks on May 31, China responded within hours — naval and air patrols in the South China Sea and east of Taiwan. ^[3] A week later, Beijing launched a "special maritime traffic law enforcement operation" east of Taiwan, inspecting 198 vessels over 1,030 nautical miles and confronting Taiwanese forces near the Pratas Islands. ^[4] The research-vessel campaign runs on a parallel track, surveying and normalizing presence across the entire First Island Chain. The Xiang Yang Hong 22 entered Japan's EEZ near the Senkakus in March. ^[5] The Xiang Yang Hong 33 surveyed Philippine-claimed features from mid-April to early May. ^[6] The same Xiang Yang Hong 22 entered Taiwan's restricted waters near Su'ao in June, prompting Taiwan's Coast Guard to accuse Beijing of "using research as a pretext for expansion." ^[7] Taiwan's Coast Guard Administration has explicitly identified these deployments as grey-zone tactics designed to "normalize its presence and reshape the status quo without triggering open conflict." ^[8]

Our actions are reasonable, lawful, legitimate, and necessary. — Zhu Fenglian

The island infrastructure piece is the most visible. In April, China's Ministry of Natural Resources announced a long-term campaign to develop and upgrade infrastructure on more than 11,000 claimed islands, framing them as a "strategic frontier." ^[9]

Major countries around the world are vying to shift their development focus to the ocean. — Ministry of Natural Resources

By June, the Philippines had detected a 6-by-6 meter wooden platform with an antenna and personnel at Scarborough Shoal, and the Philippine military chief warned it could be "a precursor to the construction of an artificial island." ^[10] A separate structure appeared and vanished between May 27 and June 1 — a probe-and-withdraw pattern that tested response thresholds without committing to a permanent installation. ^[11] The coast guard instrument has escalated on its own track. In February, the China Coast Guard expelled Philippine vessels from Scarborough Shoal with water cannons and navigation-route control. ^[12] By March, those expulsions had become joint combat-readiness patrols with the PLA Southern Theater Command. ^[13] In May, coast guard personnel physically landed on Sandy Cay, raised the Chinese flag, and used metal detectors to search for hidden markers. ^[14] That same month, the coast guard extended its patrols to the waters near Kinmen — the first time jurisdictional enforcement reached Taiwan's immediate waters. ^[15] And in July, a coast guard member struck a Philippine sailor on the head with a wooden baton at Second Thomas Shoal. ^[16] The live-fire instrument is the newest and most dangerous. On July 19, a Luyang III-class destroyer fired live rounds inside Japan's claimed EEZ near Okinotori Island — the first time Japan has disclosed such an exercise within its claimed economic zone — with a Russian frigate operating alongside. ^[17] China disputes Okinotori's status as an island, and the drill's location was chosen precisely because the legal ambiguity provides cover. But the operational signal is unambiguous: live ammunition, inside waters a US ally claims, with a Russian warship present. The scale of the overall deployment has grown in parallel. The coast guard patrolled the Senkakus for 357 days in 2025 and more than doubled its presence at Scarborough Shoal to 1,099 ship days. ^[18] Chinese military aircraft incursions around Taiwan surged nearly fifteen-fold between 2020 and 2025, from 380 to 5,709 annual sorties. ^[19] In early July, Taiwan tracked a record 110-plus PLA Navy and coast guard vessels along the First Island Chain, with four Chinese naval formations operating simultaneously in the Western Pacific, near Japan's Amami Ōshima, and off the Philippine coast. ^[20] The Philippine government's own spokesperson named the dynamic from the receiving end, months before the baton strike at Second Thomas Shoal made it physical. ^[21]

Sovereignty is not merely claimed, it is exercised. — Rogelio Villanueva Jr.

China has taken that logic literally. The Foreign Ministry now frames these operations as "legitimate exercises of jurisdiction" and "necessary actions in response to Japan's and the Philippines' manipulation of maritime delimitation issues." ^[22]

legitimate exercises of jurisdiction in accordance with the law. — Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the People's Republic of China

In this framing, the language of claim gives way to the language of jurisdiction. What was once asserted on paper is now enforced by ships. The phrase appears across multiple Foreign Ministry statements this year, from the defense of the floating platform at Scarborough Shoal to the east-of-Taiwan enforcement operations. ^[22][10] This is not improvisation. A classified PLA document revealed that as early as 2014, Lieutenant General Zheng Weiping was urging the military to prioritize countering US-Japanese intervention in the Taiwan Strait. ^[23]

both large-scale military operations against Taiwan and armed conflicts with Japan could occur at any moment. — Zheng Weiping

The 2014 document does not contain a detailed blueprint for the four-instrument campaign now unfolding. It establishes something more important: strategic direction. The current operations are the operationalization of a posture that was chosen years ago, not a reactive escalation to events in 2026. The counter-evidence is real and worth weighing. China withdrew a management platform from the Korea-China Provisional Measures Zone in January after South Korean opposition — though Beijing denied government involvement, calling it a "company decision" and maintaining plausible deniability. ^[24] The Philippines opened a major coast guard district command on Thitu Island in April, with plans for additional outposts on other Philippine-occupied features. ^[25] The island buildup is, in that sense, a two-way contest. But the pattern of Chinese retreats and allied pushback reveals the asymmetry. China's retreat came in a peripheral area — the West Sea zone with South Korea — not along the First Island Chain, where the campaign has only intensified. The allied response, meanwhile, is overwhelmingly diplomatic. On April 7, the United States and thirteen allies issued a joint statement rejecting China's South China Sea claims as illegal under the 2016 Hague arbitration ruling. ^[26] It was a legal verdict with no enforcement mechanism. China continued installing barriers, expelling vessels, and firing live rounds regardless. The distance between a diplomatic declaration and a fact on the water is the structural gap the entire First Island Chain now confronts. Thirteen nations can agree that China's claims are illegal. But a coast guard officer planting a flag on an unoccupied sandbar, a floating barrier blocking a fishing ground, a destroyer firing live rounds inside a claimed EEZ — none of these waits for a legal ruling. The Philippine spokesperson was right, in a way she did not intend. Sovereignty, in this contest, is not merely claimed. It is exercised. And the exercise has only accelerated.