China Coast Guard vessels sailed under the command of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) during two days of military drills in the Taiwan Strait in April 2025, publicly exposing the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) yearslong deception over its coast guard’s military role.
It is “a ground-breaking revelation,” reported the Atlantic Council, a United States-based think tank, contradicting Beijing’s typical portrayal of its coast guard as civilian law enforcers. That false characterization is an attempt to mask the coast guard’s coercive, aggressive and deceptive actions — such as ramming and firing water cannons at other nations’ vessels — as routine law enforcement.
China Coast Guard vessels have had numerous confrontations with Philippine vessels near Second Thomas Shoal in the South China Sea, nearly all of which Beijing claims despite an international tribunal’s ruling invalidating its sovereignty assertions. China Coast Guard ships also have intruded into waters around the Japan-administered Senkaku Islands in the East China Sea, where Beijing also pushes its arbitrary territorial claims.
The confirmation of the military ties came from the Taiwan Coast Guard, which said it observed the PLA’s Eastern Theater Command — which oversees China’s military operations in the East China and South China seas — exercising control over China Coast Guard vessels and PLA forces during Beijing’s exercises near Taiwan, the self-governed island that the CCP claims as its territory and threatens to annex by force.
“It is now clear that the PLA exercises operational control over the [China Coast Guard] and uses the cover of law enforcement” to try to gain military advantage over Taiwan, and Allies and Partners without drawing public scrutiny, the Atlantic Council reported.
The drills, lasting 33 hours, featured China Coast Guard vessels simulating a blockade of the Taiwan Strait, including boarding and inspecting vessels entering and leaving Taiwan. Such maneuvers are unprecedented in the strait, a vital global trade route, Ying Yu Lin, an assistant professor at Tamkang University’s Graduate Institute of International Affairs and Strategic Studies in Taiwan, wrote in The Diplomat magazine.
Taiwan reported nine China Coast Guard vessels operating during the drills. Using coast guard vessels is part of Beijing’s legal warfare targeting Taiwan, analysts said. “Foregrounding the China Coast Guard symbolizes Beijing’s assertion of judicial jurisdiction and [law] enforcement authority over Taiwan,” Ying wrote in April.
The China Coast Guard has operated since 2018 under the Central Military Commission, Beijing’s top military authority, and the Chinese government enacted a law in February 2021 giving the Coast Guard the authority to use weapons. Those moves essentially allowed the coast guard to transform into a second navy, Japan Forward, a Tokyo-based publication, reported in February 2025. Instead of focusing on traditional law enforcement missions targeting smugglers or providing search and rescue, the CCP’s militarized coast guard is deployed in territorial disputes to disrupt legitimate activities of sovereign nations.
According to CNN, a Taiwan analysis of the April military drills found that Beijing acted because the U.S. had “reaffirmed the importance of security and stability in the Taiwan Strait and confirmed that the U.S. is shifting its security focus to the Indo-Pacific region.”
