Clumsy ships, big risks: China’s evolving maritime playbook

In October 2023, a Hong Kong-flagged cargo ship dragged its anchor across the Baltic seabed, severing a gas pipeline and two communications cables between Finland and Estonia. In November 2024, cables linking Lithuania, Sweden, Germany and Finland—critical routes for regional internet connectivity and data transmission—were damaged in a similar way.

Chinese ships also seem increasingly clumsy in the Taiwan Strait. In the first two months of 2025 alone, Taiwan recorded four instances of damage to cables responsible for 99% of the island’s international internet traffic. One such incident in February involved the “Hong Tai 58”, flying a Togolese “convenience” flag. By April, prosecutors had indicted the ship’s Chinese owner for sabotage, which China vehemently denies.

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Accidents happen. But these incidents involving cargo ships are more likely examples of China’s “military-civil fusion” strategy, through which it blends the military and civilian sectors and uses both to pursue its global interests. The maritime strand of the strategy goes well beyond errant anchors. Yet countries on the receiving end have struggled to find definitive proof of state-level coordination.

This has significant geostrategic implications. China’s deployment of non-military forces poses a silent but serious challenge to the norms that govern warfare and maritime security. It can also reproduce and scale up its strategy in any body of water. Europeans need to work with their allies in the Indo-Pacific to respond to China’s evolving maritime playbook—for the sake of Taiwan’s security, but also for their own.

Deniable harassment, undeniable escalation

One of Beijing’s strategic priorities is to prevent the international community noticing Taiwan-related escalations and stop Taiwan’s allies intervening

China claims sovereignty and jurisdiction over the waters of the Taiwan Strait. But Western countries see the strait as international waters, where freedom of navigation applies, and oppose any unilateral change to the status quo. Moreover, China’s leader Xi Jinping has instructed the military to be ready for a Taiwan invasion by 2027. As part of this preparation, forces have drawn lessons from Russia’s war against Ukraine. Chief among these is that their victory needs to be swift, which becomes less likely if external actors get involved in helping the island defend itself.

One of Beijing’s strategic priorities is thus to prevent the international community noticing Taiwan-related escalations and stop Taiwan’s allies intervening. The tactics military-civil fusion enables are central to this, and to China’s claims over the Taiwan Strait. In peacetime, China exploits vessels’ civilian status to make its harassment unattributable and unaccountable—even undetectable. In wartime, the principle that civilian vessels should not be targeted presents China’s adversaries with a dilemma over how to respond.

As part of this, China has built up a an increasingly organised and coercive “maritime militia”. The militia is, in effect, an integral part of the country’s armed forces, trained and funded by government, but disguised as fishing cooperatives and fishers. The militia vessels are outfitted with Beidou satellite navigation systems and heavy-lift capabilities, which means they can conduct seabed-mapping and deploy hydrographic sensors. These features allow militia boats to conduct intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance; use underwater activity buoys for hydrographic research and battlespace management; and effectively stress-test the defensive resilience of coastal countries.

Militia activities have long focused on the South China Sea, where the boats often harass and collide with vessels from America, Australia and the Philippines. But militia boats are now increasingly appearing in the Taiwan Strait. One study found that, in 2024, between 128 and 209 Chinese-flagged fishing vessels had potentially conducted grey-zone activities such as sabotage in the strait. During China’s large-scale military exercises around Taiwan in April 2025, the Taiwanese government confirmed for the first time that militia craft had participated in the drills.

In recent years, European navies—including those of Britain, France and Germany—have increased freedom-of-navigation operations in the Indo-Pacific, including transits through the Taiwan Strait. Though these they aim to safeguard supply chains of, for example, semiconductors, over 60% of which are made in Taiwan and without which European industries and militaries would grind to a halt. Since the start of 2025, vessels from Britain and France (and allies including America, Australia and Japan) have passed through the strait. As their presence grows, similar patterns of coercion to those in the South China Sea seem likely to emerge. Such incidents could become precursors to conflict, whether through miscalculation or deliberate false-flag incidents.

China is also mobilising commercial roll-on, roll-off (RoRo) ferries, which can carry hundreds of vehicles and passengers. As early as 2019, the PLA had integrated RoRos into its amphibious landing drills. This is a significant development, given China’s main constraint in a Taiwan invasion lies in its capacity to put sufficient troops and equipment ashore. US intelligence indicates that China is planning to construct more than 70 large ferries by the end of 2026. This is more than double the 30 vessels flagged by the Five Eyes in 2022, indicating a substantial increase in China’s capacity to realise its expansionist ambitions.

On top of this, early in 2025 China tested a new class of landing barge along its eastern seaboard, equipped for the first time with an extended landing ramp. This is designed to interface with RoRo ferries. The integration of the two is a prime example of military-civil fusion and shows how China is becoming increasingly able to integrate RoRos into its amphibious operations.

Covert strategies, overt responses

Given China’s use of covert and deniable strategies, the EU and European governments need to underpin their approach to China’s military-civil activities with clear policy signalling. More regular naval activity, such as transits through the Taiwan Strait and joint exercises in Indo-Pacific waters, would send a stronger signal that international attention and engagement in the region are steadily increasing. From both a legal and a strategic perspective, such efforts must be part of any credible attempt to counter China’s maritime playbook.

But a robust military presence and political signalling alone cannot address China’s increasingly hybrid tactics. Navies do not always have legal authority to respond to incidents involving civilian vessels. Without a clearer understanding of how China’s activities are evolving, it will be impossible to build effective response mechanisms. This risks not only letting individual maritime-safety incidents slip beyond existing norms, but also forfeiting the critical agency Europeans and their allies need to prevent escalation and uphold the global maritime legal order.

For this reason, European and Asian governments must further integrate their policy expertise and experience. Promising platforms to strengthen dialogue and cooperation with Indo-Pacific partners include the EU’s ESIWA, a programme to enhance security cooperation with allies in Asia; and CRIMARIO, the bloc’s project to safeguard critical maritime routes. European states have established strong information-sharing mechanisms and maritime capacity-building initiatives with countries such as the Philippines. They have also developed security and defence partnerships with Japan and South Korea. They should build on this to expand their maritime domain awareness and identify emerging patterns of maritime security threats.

Such collaboration would enable Indo-Pacific countries to maintain a continuous and visible presence, uphold jurisdiction, and deter or interdict arbitrary activities by Chinese vessels at an early stage. Proactive monitoring would also enable greater public exposure of such activities to impose political costs on China. Systematically collecting evidence on the activities of military-civil fusion linked vessels would also help the international community build a robust case on the illegality of these actions. This would, in turn, inform and strengthen regulatory and legal countermeasures in both the domestic and international arenas.

Finally, Taiwan is on the front line of China’s military-civil fusion activities and has extensive experience identifying and responding to related threats. Europeans should therefore expand their dialogue with Taiwan on subsea-cable security and support Taipei’s participation in regional discussions on non-traditional security threats. This could even include participation in regional exercises related to such threats. This would reinforce information-sharing, strengthen collective preparedness and enhance resilience across the wider region. These efforts are not only for Asia’s benefit; they are a safeguard Europe needs for itself.