Since the start of the decade, the People’s Liberation Army Navy has transformed its posture around Taiwan from a lone patrol ship to a multi-vessel ring that security officials described as a tightening noose. The deployment, detailed by regional security officials to The Wall Street Journal, now puts five or six Chinese warships on station around the island at nearly all times — a presence Beijing has expanded in response to political developments it viewed unfavorably, the officials said.
The first change came in 2020, when China added two warships to its existing patrol vessel, one off Taiwan’s northern coast and one off its southern coast, according to security officials who closely track the movements. The shift followed Taiwan’s 2020 presidential election, in which voters re-elected Tsai Ing-wen, who had cast herself as a firm defender of the island’s democracy — a result Beijing saw as a rebuke.
In 2022, a fourth warship took up station off Taiwan’s eastern coast, establishing a near-nonstop presence on all four sides. That escalation followed then-U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s trip to Taipei, the officials said. A fifth ship joined the eastern deployment in 2024, and a sixth has since usually also been present on that side. Further escalations followed Taiwan’s 2024 election and an incident that year in which two Chinese fishermen died in an encounter with Taiwan’s coast guard.
“It represents a tightening of the noose,” said Michael Dahm, a retired U.S. Navy intelligence officer and senior resident fellow at the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies.
The composition of the patrol fleet has also changed, the officials said. Where the navy once deployed mainly frigates, it now mixes frigates with large guided-missile destroyers, reflecting what analysts describe as Beijing’s more aggressive posture and the expansion of its fleet. China has 48 destroyers, rapidly built in recent years.
The warships typically stay outside the 24-nautical-mile contiguous zone that Taiwan claims, but not always. They frequently conduct what the Chinese military calls “joint combat readiness patrols” — periods of heightened activity when they push inward by a few miles in a choreographed tactic that security officials described as “bumping the boundary.” Taiwan recorded 40 such patrols last year and 15 so far this year, according to Taiwanese officials.
Taiwan responds by sending its own warships and coast guard vessels to shadow the Chinese ships until they leave the 24-nautical-mile boundary. Those encounters have grown longer, now often lasting up to 48 hours, the officials said. The operations place a heavy burden on Taiwan’s navy, which is far smaller and faces manpower shortages, requiring ships to be ready at all times, delaying maintenance, and cutting into crew rest, according to Taiwanese officials.
The Chinese patrols serve purposes beyond political messaging, analysts said. Each deployment gives the People’s Liberation Army Navy opportunities to gather data on how Taiwanese forces move, operate, and communicate, and how they respond to Chinese activities.
“It will be harder to surprise the Chinese navy in the future,” Dahm said. “For Taiwan it means fewer options, less places to hide, less possibility for deception.”
Operating off Taiwan’s east coast allows China to study waters that could conceal hiding spots for enemy submarines, Dahm said. In a conflict, that would complicate any U.S. effort to join the defense of Taiwan, making it harder for American submarines to approach Chinese naval ships deployed off the island’s eastern seaboard.
On that side, Chinese ships are often stationed off key Taiwanese military bases at Hualien and Taitung, according to the security officials. Collin Koh, a senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore, said the positioning serves a clear operational rationale: collecting data and building a battlefield picture. Chinese destroyers sailing past those bases today could, in war, be tasked with striking and destroying them, Koh said.
Security officials said 2020 was an inflection point in China’s military activities around Taiwan. The year before, Chinese leader Xi Jinping had directed the armed forces to have capabilities in place by 2027 to take Taiwan by force if ordered, moving the timeline forward from 2035, according to U.S. intelligence assessments. Security officials said they are watching to see if the count of Chinese ships off Taiwan’s shores edges up again.